‘UNPROFESSIONAL’

22-Year-Old Suing Musk for Defamation Comes for His Lawyer

The plaintiff is seeking sanctions against Musk’s lawyer, who allegedly behaved “in the most obnoxious manner one could contemplate without crossing into parody.”

A recent college graduate suing Elon Musk for defamation is now taking on Musk’s celebrity attorney, Alex Spiro. In a motion for sanctions filed Monday, Benjamin Brody accuses Spiro of representing Musk in Texas without credentials in the state and behaving in an “astonishingly unprofessional” manner during a deposition in March.

“He continually interrupted the deposition with commentary, gave numerous improper instructions not to answer, berated opposing counsel, insulted Plaintiff’s claims, mocked counsel’s questions, and generally acted in the most obnoxious manner one could contemplate without crossing into parody,” the motion, filed in Texas district court, alleges.

The filing claims that Spiro repeatedly interjected during the questioning, called the case “stupid,” and jeeringly told the plaintiff’s counsel, “I know this is your big day in the sun. You're running out of time.”

Spiro, a Harvard Law grad, has developed a reputation for aggressively defending the powerful and ultra-rich. His clients have included New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Jay-Z, alleged millennial fraudster Charlie Javice, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams. He sought approval to represent Musk in Texas earlier this year, but the request is still pending.

Brody sued Musk in October and accused the billionaire of boosting a conspiracy that falsely suggested he was affiliated with neo-Nazis.

The dispute was the result of widespread misinformation on X. Last June, as The Daily Beast previously reported, two factions of far-right extremists came to blows at an event in Oregon. The fighters wore ski masks, but in the scuffle, two of their masks were yanked off. After a clip of the brawl was posted online, vigilante X users falsely identified Brody, who is Jewish, as one of the participants.

Some of the crackpot investigators then claimed that Brody’s supposed involvement was proof of a “false flag” conspiracy. Musk interacted with multiple posts about Brody. For instance, he wrote in response to an article about the 22-year-old: “Looks like one is a college student (who wants to join the govt) and another is maybe an Antifa member, but nonetheless a probable false flag situation.”

The claim was baseless, Brody said in his lawsuit, and according to Monday’s filing, the billionaire’s sources were two X accounts with the usernames “DrFrensor” and “MattWallace888.”

In Musk’s deposition, which Spiro pushed to keep confidential, he conceded that he did not research Brody on his own before publicly speculating on his involvement. But he downplayed the effect of his tweet to his 145 million followers, 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.”

Brody, however, said he had to flee his home as a result of Musk’s comments.

Monday’s motion emphasized that Musk has previously admitted to posting impulsively on X. For instance, he once told his biographer Walter Isaacson, “I’ve shot myself in the foot so often I ought to buy some Kevlar boots,” the filing noted. He also allegedly told Isaacson, “My tweets are like Niagara Falls sometimes and they come too fast… Just dip a cup in there and try to avoid the random turds.” (Musk said in his deposition that he was likening activity on X in general to Niagara Falls, not his posts in particular.)

A lawyer for Brody declined to comment on Tuesday. In a statement, a representative for Spiro said, “This is amateur hour. I understand [Brody’s lawyer] wants his 15 minutes of fame, but these shakedown tactics won’t work.”

“He possesses a plainspoken charm that clients and juries find beguiling,” The New Yorker wrote in a 2023 profile about Spiro. “With that common touch, he’s come to specialize in protecting the rich and famous from the consequences of their poorest decisions.”

Brody’s motion for sanctions argues that Musk’s deposition was disastrous for the billionaire but “could have gone even worse” without Spiro’s obstruction. It also raised questions about whether Musk improperly deleted an alleged alias account on X that may have been pertinent to the case.

The account, @ermnmusk, was apparently deleted on Feb. 21, the same day the court issued an order outlining discovery materials in the case. “In other words, after almost a year of inactivity on the account and with no recent public discussion about it, it appears Musk chose to delete the account,” the motion declares. That, it continues, “is either intentional spoliation or an extraordinary longshot coincidence.”

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Noah KirschWealth and Power Reporter

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