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Musk reportedly hired felon with a shady past to investigate diver he called a 'pedo'

#1
C C Offline
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-mus...er-2019-10

EXCERPT: . . . Elon Musk in a tweet accused Unsworth of being a "pedo guy" in July 2018. [...] Last month, court filings revealed that Musk hired a private investigator to dig up Unsworth's past after the exchange of words between them. Musk alleged that an aide hired a man named James Howard of the investigation firm Jupiter Military & Tactical Systems, to look into Unsworth. Musk said it was Jared Birchall, the president of Musk's family office, who relayed information to him from Howard about Unsworth's alleged relationship with an underage girl, a claim that has not been substantiated.

L. Lin Wood, an attorney representing Unsworth, told Business Insider in September that Howard's alleged findings are false. Howard, whose real name is James Howard-Higgins, was actually a scammer who stole money from his business partners and was sentenced to three years in jail for fraud, BuzzFeed News reported on Thursday citing public records and interviews with the man's former associates.

Court documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that Howard-Higgins, who identified himself as the CEO of Jupiter Military & Tactical Systems, emailed Musk and offered to "dig deep" into Unsworth's past and was retained by Musk for $50,000. [Unsworth was supposedly seeking "only" $75,000 from Musk for damages to his reputation.]

According to BuzzFeed News, Musk and his team did not properly look into Howard-Higgins' own history before hiring him. [...] "With a prison record it ought to be difficult to continue in this same line of business. Sadly it appears not to be the case." (MORE - details)
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#2
Secular Sanity Offline
Jesus Christ! Doesn’t that guy have any advisors? I was able to find out within seconds that his statement was false. Someone should have looked and told him to STFU, but no, he had to go and double down by saying, "bet ya a signed dollar it's true." WTF?

Supposedly, he’s trying to claim opinion privilege.

Elon Musk claims US constitutional right to call Thai-cave hero Vernon Unsworth a ‘pedo’ and ‘child rapist’, even though he’s not

"This motion boils down to a single question," his lawyers wrote in a motion to dismiss filed Wednesday. "Would a reasonable reader believe that Musk’s statements were supported by objective facts or were instead 'non actionable opinion'?"

Well, good luck with that, dumb-butt (<--just my opinion, of course) because for one, Thailand does have a reputation for being a center for child sex tourism and child prostitution. Secondly, there was clearly reckless disregard. Not only that, but in Gertz vs. Robert the Supreme Court ruled that a private individual has less access to the media to contradict the errors and minimize the impact of the defamatory statement than would a public figure. Therefore, the state interest in protecting the private individual is greater than it is in protecting a public figure.

Just pay the man already. Rolleyes
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#3
Zinjanthropos Offline
Quote:Just pay the man already.


Heh heh....No kidding. 

I wonder if he'd take a free 1st class ticket for a ride on a rocket(no pun intended).
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#4
C C Offline
(UPDATE) Elon Musk pressured Thai officials to say nice things about his mini-subs in the midst of a deadly rescue mission
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/08/tesla-ce...ve-pr.html

EXCERPT: . . . In July 2018, even before the stranded boys and their coach were rescued from the flooding caves in Chiang Rai, Musk directed his employees to compel Thai government officials to make complimentary public statements about him and the technology his engineers were developing to aid in the cave rescue.

The BBC had reported on a regional Thai official, who said that Musk's "equipment is technologically sophisticated" but "it doesn't fit with our mission to go in the cave" and it's "not practical."

Musk wasn't satisfied with that response. "'[W]e need to go all out and make this guy retract his comment," Musk said, according to the filing. Unsworth's attorneys described how Musk's employees used the Thai Consul in Los Angeles as an intermediary to pressure the Thai officials, including the prime minister, to issue "a statement 'revers[ing] the statement.'"

Doing Musk's bidding were Steve Davis, who is both president of the Boring Company and a SpaceX engineer, and Sam Teller, the director for the office of the CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink and the Boring Company. They wanted the Thai governor to recant his critical statement and asked the Prime Minister or governor to say that the mini-sub would have worked and was a technically sound and a practical solution.

Throughout the process, Musk refused to listen to his advisers, who recommended that he apologize to Unsworth, according to the filing. According to the filing, Sam Teller said told Musk that publicity efforts related to the cave rescue and mini-sub, "raised concerns within his team, including worries that 'it makes engineers at our company lose confidence in Elon.'"

He actively fought back against that idea. "After sleeping on this, I'm not happy about the suggested approach," Musk wrote to Teller, the filing shows. It "would simply have been dismissed as a disingenuous and cowardly attempt to restore the stock price," he said. (MORE - details)
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