Elon Musk’s Deposition in Defamation Case From Jewish Man He Falsely Labeled a Nazi Released in FULL — With Stunning Revelations

Sipa by the use of AP Pictures

Elon Musk had to sit down for a deposition in March in a defamation lawsuit filed by way of a Jewish man he accused of being fascinated with a neo-Nazi brawl, and he fought hard to maintain the deposition personal. Sadly for Musk, he misplaced that legal battle and the whole transcript has been released, as mentioned by means of The Huffington Put up.

The dispute arose from tweets Musk wrote in June 2023 that amplified an online conspiracy thought accusing a 22-12 months-old California man named Ben Brody of no longer best participating in a brawl in Oregon City, Oregon between the Rose City Nationalists, a neo-Nazi team, and the Proud Boys, but additionally of being an undercover federal agent taking part within the brawl as a part of a false flag operation.

A number of of the neofascist brawlers have been caught on digital camera with their masks off, leading to the inaccurate identification of Brody as one among them. His title and private information quickly spread online, with conspiracy theorists digging up social media posts from Brody’s fraternity the place it used to be stated that he was majoring in political science and “plans to work for the government” after commencement.

The accusation used to be farfetched on its face, and the entire more so when Brody pointed out he used to be not only Jewish and subsequently not going to seek out widespread ground among neo-Nazis, he was in a wholly completely different state, a whole lot of miles away, when the brawl came about. But online conspiracies are tough fires to extinguish — particularly when the Chief Twit promotes them to his (at the time) nearly 150 million followers.

Among the tweets and replies Musk wrote in regards to the incident, one remarked that it “[l]o.k. like one is a university student (who needs to enroll in the government)…but on the other hand a most probably false flag scenario.” This tweet continues to be up and has no longer been deleted; a couple of Community Notes have been proposed but one way or the other none had been ever licensed to be made public.

In his lawsuit, Brody is seeking greater than $1 million for damages, announcing that he and his family had to flee their dwelling as a result of the threats and harassment Musk’s tweet directed his way. He’s also concerned in regards to the affect these on-line accusations can have on his future job searches.

It’s smartly-centered at this point that Musk has a track report of tweeting, quote tweeting, and replying to debts with questionable posts starting from unfounded accusations to straight up anti-Semitism, directing what Claire Berlinski termed a “human tidal wave of attention” to the “loathsome radical losers” who publish this hateful content material.

Musk has steadily sought to shield his posts under the banner of free speech (while lashing out at folks that dare criticize him or his platform), and he takes a similar tactic in this deposition led by using Brody’s legal professional, Mark Bankston, who in the past represented probably the most Sandy Hook oldsters who efficiently sued Alex Jones for defamation. Representing Musk for this deposition was once Alex Spiro.

The roughly two-hour deposition, which occurred March 27 over Zoom, was once contentious from the beginning, with Spiro accusing Bankston of filing “these foolish, frivolous shake-down instances” and Musk showing “little figuring out” of the lawsuit towards him, as HuffPo characterized his testimony. (Bankston fired back at Spiro that it was once “not right kind” for a attorney to “just begin making random statements in regards to the alleged frivolity of a case to any other attorney in a deposition,” among different retorts.)

Under is a choice of one of the vital noteworthy excerpts from the deposition.

Musk had a burner Twitter account where he position-played as his infant son

This tidbit was nutty enough that HuffPo wrote a separate article about it. The account in question, @ErmnMusk, is named “Elon Take a look at” and shows a photograph of Musk’s younger son. Consistent with Bankston, the account was once deleted in February, the identical day a court docket order concerning discovery was once issued, but it’s once again energetic and posting tweets. It’s no longer totally clear if Musk himself is doing the posting, however the tweets seem to be principally memes promoting Tesla and his different businesses and dunking on his rival social media structures.

The previous @ErmnMusk tweets had been deleted and the oldest one at present public is from March 27, the day of his deposition.

On the deposition, Musk was once proven an exhibit with older tweets from this account and requested about it. He claimed it was a “take a look at account” that he “briefly used.” Among the tweets are feedback talking about nightclubs and taking a look ahead to turning 3 years old on an upcoming day that did coincide with the 0.33 birthday of X Æ A-12, Musk’s son with Grimes.

Screenshot of @ErmnMusk Tweets.

Musk admits he does now not do so much truth-checking

Musk used to be grilled about what steps he took to verify the accusations that Brody was on the neo-Nazi brawl sooner than tweeting about it, and wasn’t ready to provide you with much, as opposed to tagging @CommunityNotes in what he portrayed as a show of “just right religion” (notice once more, Group Notes by no means did actually make public any corrective notes on this tweet).

Bankston: We’re going to speak about these tweets, however first I want to verify: You were ordered to answer some discovery, and it appears out of your solutions that prior to your tweet on June twenty seventh, you didn’t do any searches on Twitter or any net searches like on a search engine for details about the identity of this unmasked brawler; is that right?

Musk: That’s proper.

Bankston: oKay. Would it not be fair for me to assert that instead of the tweets that you simply interacted with, you didn’t steady different details about this unmasked brawler?

Musk: I don’t don’t forget securing different knowledge.

Bankston: In other words, you didn’t get any knowledge by textual content or e-mail or any other type of verbal exchange with anyone else about the brawler?

Musk: I don’t do not forget. Not that I — no longer that I consider, no.

Bankston: oK. And did you ask anyone to head get you — let me start that again. Did you ask somebody to head get you any data on this unmasked brawler?

Musk: No.

Bankston: oKay. So it’d be honest to say that the ideas that you simply bought in regards to the brawler was from the tweets that you interacted with?

Musk: Correct.

Bankston dug into the impression Musk’s tweets and replies can have, because of his massive target audience, in keeping with Musk pronouncing he had most effective written his tweets about Brody as replies, so they’d a smaller audience:

Bankston: You do remember the fact that the amount of people who saw this, who have considered this, is equivalent to all 30 major league baseball stadiums crammed to capability? You wouldn’t dispute that? I imply, we’re talking over a million individuals.

Spiro: Objection to type.

Musk: Yeah, that’s actually – that can seem like a large number, however it’s not compared to the fact – I imagine there are something on the order of five to eight trillion views per 12 months so one million is truly –

B: Not a tremendous deal?

M: – hit or miss, yeah.

B: Not an immense deal that this went out to that many people?

M: Proper.

He acknowledges he has financially harmed Twitter together with his posts

Musk infamously paid $forty four billion for Twitter after being unable to get out of his contract, and has given that made many controversial decisions, including altering the verification system and rebranding the platform as “X.” Bankston requested him about his posts, and how they could be harming the corporate.

Musk’s reply:

I imagine my posting has actually remained unchanged sooner than and after the acquisition. The — and going back to the form of self-inflected wounds…I feel there’s — I’ve probably finished — I could have performed extra to financially impair the company than to assist it, but definitely I – I don’t information my posts by means of what is financially a good option however what I believe is attention-grabbing or vital or unique to the general public.

Read the full deposition transcript below, by means of HuffPost:

Elon Musk Deposed In Lawsui… by way of Sebastian M

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