Elon Musk accused the wrong man of attacking a Pride event. Now he’s suing Musk for $1 million

When Neo-Nazis and Proud Boys disrupted a June 24, 2023 Pride event in Oregon City, transphobic billionaire Elon Musk used his massive social media network to publicly identify 22-year-old Ben Brody as one of the disruptors — the only problem: Brody wasn’t even in the state on that date.

Nonetheless, Musk told his 180 million followers that Brody was likely federal agent pretending to be a neo-Nazi in a “false flag situation” in a post that remains active on X. The resulting reportedly harassment made Brody and his family have to flee their home; now they’re suing Musk for $1 million in damages in a trial set to begin on April 22.

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Musk sat down for a two-hour deposition for the trial on March 27, and he wanted to keep his testimony sealed from public eyes, but a judge denied his request, and it was made public on Monday, according to The Huffington Post.

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During the taping of the deposition, Brody’s lawyer informed Musk that the conspiracy theory about Brody came from an X account that “features extreme rightwing memes, neo-Nazi apologia/nostalgia, juvenile and cringe-worthy attempts at bigoted humor, low effort bait tweets, delusional panics over lazy hoaxes, and a cavalcade of absurdly false information.”

Musk admitted, “I’m guilty of many self-inflicted wounds…. I wasn’t trying to assess [the post’s] credibility…. There’s some risk that what I say is incorrect, but one has to balance that against having a chilling effect on free speech in general, which would undermine the entire foundation of our democracy.”

Musk told lawyers it was “not a big deal” that his message went out to millions on his social network. Musk also admitted to using a sock puppet account in which he pretended to be his own three-year-old son and write things like, “I wish I was old enough to go to nightclubs. They sound so fun.”

“I may have done more to financially impair the company than to help it,” Musk admitted, “but certainly I — I do not guide my posts by what is financially beneficial but what I believe is interesting or important or entertaining to the public.”

Musk’s “entertaining” posts, many of which repeat transphobic talking points and neo-Nazi conspiracy theories like the “Great Replacement Theory,” have caused big-name advertisers to flee the site in droves.

Musk said he doubted his tweet harmed Brody, saying, “People are attacked all the time in the media, online media, social media, but it is rare that that actually has a meaningful negative impact on their life.”

Musk’s site has been blamed for encouraging real-world violence and death threats against LGBTQ+ people.