Elon Musk asks judge to toss diver’s lawsuit in Thai dustup

LOS ANGELES – Elon Musk is asking a California judge to throw out a lawsuit filed against him by a British diver who accused the tech entrepreneur of falsely calling him a pedophile.

Wednesday’s court filing argues that “the public knew from the outset that Musk’s insults were not intended to be statements of fact.”

Musk called diver Vernon Unsworth a “pedo” in a tweet to his 22.5 million followers after Unsworth criticized Musk in a CNN interview in July about efforts to rescue young soccer players trapped in a cave in Thailand.

Musk and engineers from his rocket company, SpaceX, built a small submarine and shipped it to Thailand to help with the rescue. The device wasn’t used and in the interview, Unsworth called it a “PR stunt.”