Musk takes the stand in first day of “pedo guy” trial

Enlarge / Elon Musk arrives at federal court in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019. (credit: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Elon Musk has never been someone to back down from a fight. On Tuesday, Musk’s confrontational personality brought him to a Los Angeles federal courtroom to testify in a defamation lawsuit brought by British cave explorer Vernon Unsworth. Musk told the court that he didn’t intend for people to take it literally when he labeled Unsworth a “pedo guy” on Twitter, a site where he had more than 20 million followers.

Musk’s feud with Unsworth began in July 2018, when Unsworth and Musk were both trying to help a dozen boys trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand. Unsworth, who had years of prior experience with the cave, advised authorities on the rescue effort. Meanwhile, Musk assembled a team of SpaceX engineers to construct a “miniature submarine” to aid in the rescue efforts.

The submarine was never used; rescuers had already rescued the boys by the time it arrived in Thailand. When Unsworth was asked about Musk’s invention on CNN, he scoffed. The contraption had “absolutely no chance of working,” Unsworth said, adding that Musk should “stick his submarine where it hurts.”