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Courtroom sketch shows British cave diver Vernon Unsworth in court on Wednesday<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Elon Musk is seen above in a courtroom sketch during the trial in a defamation case filed by British cave diver Vernon Unsworth<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Unsworth added that it \u2018hurts\u2019 to think of the possible affect Musk\u2019s \u2018pedo guy\u2019 remark has had on his English wife Vanessa – from whom he separated in 1993 – and his daughter Danielle, 24. <\/p>\n
Unsworth defended his CNN Interview in which he criticized Musk\u2019s mini submarine plan – remarks that prompted the wealthy entrepreneur to lash back with his \u2018pedo guy\u2019 tweet. <\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s submarine \u2018would not have made it 50 yards into the cave,\u2019 he told the court.<\/p>\n
\u2018From the video I had seen (of the sub being tested in a pool), in my assessment it was just not practical for the cave system.\u2019 <\/p>\n
Unsworth also countered Musk\u2019s claim that he lies about the electric car maker and his team being \u2018thrown out\u2019 of the cave. <\/p>\n
\u2018It was what I heard generally around the cave system and there was an order that the only people allowed into the cave were rescuers.\u2019 <\/p>\n
Unsworth – who has been a cave exploring enthusiast for almost 50 years – told the court that although he has been a consultant and adviser on three books and two documentaries about the dramatic rescue of the 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach, he has only made \u2018about $3,000\u2019 from these projects.<\/p>\n
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Elon Musk arrives in court for the second day of his defamation trial against a British diver who he called a ‘pedo guy’ on Twitter <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Musk took the stand for six hours on Tuesday. He was expected to testify again on Wednesday<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Earlier in the day the court heard how the Tesla boss hired a private investigator to look into Unsworth\u2019s background. <\/span><\/p>\n The investigator was offered a bonus of $10,000 if he could come up with evidence of \u2018nefarious behavior\u2019 in the British diver\u2019s lifestyle in Thailand.<\/span><\/p>\n After Unsworth filed a defamation suit against Musk over his \u2018pedo guy\u2019 tweet, the world famous entrepreneur\u2019s family office manager, Jared Birchall, hired PI James Howard – who claimed to have been in UK Special Forces and to have worked for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen – to look into Unsworth\u2019s past.<\/p>\n Birchall – who admitted in court that he did not verify Howard\u2019s credentials before hiring him – said he used a pseudonym, James Brickhouse, in his emails with Howard to provide distance between the investigator and Musk. <\/p>\n Howard – who was paid a fee of $52,000 to come up with a profile of Unsworth\u2019s life in Thailand – reported back to Birchall who told him that he should leak information to the British press based on the following bullet points that Brit journalists could investigate further:<\/p>\n Thailand is the world capital of pedophilia. <\/p>\n Unsworth had frequented Thailand since the 1980s, leading to his divorce from his wife in the UK. <\/p>\n He went to Thailand frequently under the \u2018guise\u2019 of caving expeditions. <\/p>\n His second wife is 30 years is junior and when he met her she was a minor. <\/p>\n British diver Vernon Unsworth arrives in court in L.A. on Wednesday for the second day of their trial <\/p>\n<\/div>\n She was not the first teenager he interacted with.<\/p>\n Telling Howard, \u2018That should be enough for a story\u2019 Birchall confirmed under cross examination at the Federal Court in downtown Los Angeles, that he told Howard he would get a bonus of $10,000 \u2018upon successful confirmation of nefarious behavior on the part of Mr. Unsworth.\u2019 <\/p>\n And when Howard couldn\u2019t produce such information, Birchall said he told him, \u2018You have given us just about nothing.\u2019 <\/p>\n According to Unsworth\u2019s attorney, Lin Wood, Howard also reported back to Birchall was that Unsworth had married a 12-year-old girl in Thailand. <\/p>\n \u2018But as it turns out Howard was a con man – this information was false,\u2019 Wood told the court. <\/p>\n \u2018Did Mr. Howard tell you that Mr. Unsworth was a child rapist?\u2019 Wood asked Birchall who responded, \u2018He didn\u2019t use those words but one concluded that because of the age (of the girl).’ <\/p>\n \u2018We never believed he married a 12-year-old girl but she was 11 or 12 when he met her,\u2019 added Birchall who said that he passed this information to Musk. <\/p>\n Earlier, Musk told the court that he acted out of retaliation after Unsworth mocked him for trying to help rescue 12 Thai boys from a cave they were trapped in last summer. <\/p>\n \u2018He insulted me so I insulted him back,’ he said. <\/p>\n Musk made his \u2018pedo guy\u2019 comment on Twitter after Unsworth, 63, criticized the tycoon\u2019s offer of the use of a miniature submarine he\u2019d invented to help in the rescue. <\/p>\n And in court Musk – wearing a dark suit and tie – told the jury of three men and five women: \u2018I would like to make it clear that I was not calling Mr. Unsworth a pedophile\u2026 pedo guy is just a flippant, off-the-cuff insult that just means creepy old man.’<\/p>\n Divers didn\u2019t use Musk\u2019s submarine in saving the boys\u2019 lives and Unsworth told CNN that the outspoken tycoon\u2019s offer was just a \u2018publicity stunt\u2019 and Musk should \u2018stick his submarine where it hurts.\u2019 <\/p>\n But Musk insisted in court that the leader of the rescue, Rick Stanton, took his design of a cigar-shaped mini submarine – big enough to hold one boy – very seriously and encouraged him to finish building it in case it could be used to help save the youngsters. <\/p>\n Divers didn\u2019t use Musk\u2019s submarine in saving the boys\u2019 lives and Unsworth told CNN that the outspoken tycoon\u2019s offer was just a \u2018publicity stunt\u2019 and Musk should \u2018stick his submarine where it hurts.\u2019 A courtroom sketch above of Musk inside court Wednesday<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Courtroom sketch shows diver Rick Stanton during the trial in a defamation case filed by British cave diver Vernon Unsworth<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So he was upset by Unsworth\u2019s criticism of the sub – which he named the Wild Boar after the boys\u2019 soccer team – and his lawyers showed a video in court of the vessel being tested in a swimming pool.<\/p>\n He denigrated the efforts of my team (who built the sub) in a way that was totally inappropriate. <\/p>\n Musk told U.S. Federal Court in downtown LA. \u2018A lot of people worked day and night to be helpful – they left their families to help. <\/p>\n \u2018He (Unsworth) said it wouldn\u2019t work and he also said we were thrown out of the cave, which was a lie. He was extremely rude and contentious.\u2019 <\/p>\n Stanton – a world-wide acclaimed diver and spelunker who led the courageous and rescue of the 12 Thai boys from a mile and a half deep cave – was called to the witness stand Wednesday and told the court that Unsworth provided valuable information on the layout of the cave and the best way to rescue the boys. <\/p>\n \u2018He had the best knowledge of the cave system,\u2019 added Stanton, a 58-year-old retired firefighter from Coventry, England.<\/p>\n \u2018Vernon drew a map in micro detail of the cave for us to follow.\u2019<\/p>\n While Stanton and his team eventually brought all the Thai boys and their coach out of the cave by sedating them and swimming them out with masks on them, Musk\u2019s mini sub offer was kept in mind as a possible plan B.<\/p>\n While Musk, 48, conceded that his angry \u2018pedo guy\u2019 tweet was \u2018regrettable\u2019, he also said he deleted the tweet within hours of posting it and later apologized on Twitter, in a deposition and again during his court testimony Tuesday. <\/p>\n When Unsworth\u2019s lawyer Lin Wood questioned how Unsworth could have seen the tweeted apology when he doesn\u2019t have a Twitter account, Musk said: \u2018Most of what I say on Twitter generally gets reported elsewhere.\u2019 <\/p>\n Among those on Musk’s witness list are the British diver’s first wife, Vanessa – who Musk and his lawyers claim he abandoned to go to Thailand – and his current wife, the Thai women he was falsely accused of marrying when she was a child. <\/p>\n Unsworth’s lawyers have called the Tesla billionaire ‘thin-skinned’ and a ‘bully’. <\/p>\n He is seeking unspecified damages that are to be determined by a jury. <\/p>\n The judge, Stephen V Wilson, told the jury the case would last approximately one week<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Musk said he did not know that Unsworth was deeply involved in the cave rescue of 12 Thai boys when he insulted him on Twitter.<\/p>\n \u2018I just thought he was some random creepy guy the media were interviewing,\u2019 Musk said. \u2018I thought at the time he was unrelated to the rescue.\u2019 <\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s just what I said,\u2019 Musk told the court, referring to his tweet. \u2018He said he was going to sue me. He hadn\u2019t filed\u2026 it was odd.\u2019 <\/p>\n June 23 2018:<\/span> The boys and their soccer coach become trapped in the caves<\/p>\n July 8:<\/span> Musk tweets that he is using Tesla engineers to build a ‘kid size’ submarine to try to get them out<\/p>\n The Thai soccer team got lost in caves while exploring and became stuck for days. Musk offered to help and sent a team of Tesla engineers to build a submarine to get them out <\/p>\n<\/div>\n July 8 – 10:<\/span> The boys were rescued gradually in a complex mission involving hundreds of people <\/p>\n July 13:<\/span> Vernon Unsworth gives a CNN interview where he is asked about Musk’s plan. He calls it a ‘PR stunt’ and says: ‘He can stick it where it hurts’ in reference to the submarine <\/p>\n July 15:<\/span> Musk tweets calling him a ‘pedo guy’ <\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n July 17:<\/span> Musk apologizes<\/p>\n August 15:<\/span> Musk hires private investigator James Howard after he got in touch with him saying, in an email: ‘Dear Elon, you may wish to dig deep and look into Mr. Unsworth’s past… no smoke without fire!’<\/p>\n They set about launching their ‘investigation’ but go to great lengths to keep Musk separate from it. In emails, Musk’s associate Jared Birchall carried out their dealings and Musk was referred to as ‘the principle’. He and Birchall never discussed it in writing.<\/p>\n August 28:<\/span> Musk tweets in response to a follower who accused him of lying about Unsworth: ‘You don’t think it’s strange he hasn’t sued me yet?<\/p>\n August 30:<\/span> BuzzFeed reporter emails Musk for a comment. He replies saying, among other things, that Unsworth married a ‘child bride’ and inferring that he is a rapist<\/p>\n September 4:<\/span> BuzzFeed publishes the story <\/p>\n September 5:<\/span> Private Investigator emails Birchall, Musk’s associate, saying: ‘At no time have have I reported that the<\/span> target is a child rapist.’<\/span><\/p>\n September 17<\/span>: Unsworth files a lawsuit against Musk <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fighting back tears of emotion, cave rescue hero Vernon Unsworth told a Los Angeles court that he felt \u2018raw, humiliated, ashamed and dirtied\u2019 when Elon Musk called him a \u2018pedo guy\u2019 on Twitter. Unsworth said: \u2018I took it to mean I was being branded a pedophile. ‘It felt disgusting….Effectively I was given a life sentence without […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":139262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":"","twitter_917774835383787521_917774835383787521":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139261"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181858,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139261\/revisions\/181858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"British](\"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/elon-musk-returns-to-court-in-l-a-to-give-more-testimony-in-defamation-case-6.jpg\")
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<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\nTIMELINE OF THE THAI RESCUE AND MUSK AND UNSWORTH’S DISPUTE <\/h3>\n
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