Musk spent $50,000 digging into critic’s personal life

Enlarge / Elon Musk in 2015. (credit: ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images)

Elon Musk spent more than $50,000 digging into the personal life of British expat and Thai caver Vern Unsworth in summer 2018 in an effort to substantiate the claim that he was a "pedo guy." Musk revealed the spending in his latest response to a defamation lawsuit Unsworth filed against him last year.

Initially, Musk's investigator turned up some seemingly damning information about Unsworth, including a claim that Unsworth began dating his wife when she was around 12 years old. However, further investigation failed to confirm this claim, with the investigator finding she was actually around 18 years old when the couple met. (The wife, Woranan Ratrawiphukkunand, later told UK newspapers she was 33 when they met.)

But Musk argues that it doesn't matter, legally speaking, if his claims about Unsworth were actually true. What matters is that Musk believed the claims were true at the time he repeated them to BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Mac.

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