NEW YORK: Elon Musk revealed that he hired a private investigator for US$50,000 (1.5 million baht) to back up his assertion in a 2018 tweet that a British caver was a “pedo guy".

Musk is now asking a judge to forgo a trial and a throw out a lawsuit by the caver, Vernon Unsworth, accusing the chief executive officer of Tesla and Space Exploration Technologies of defamation.

“By referring to Mr Unsworth as ‘pedo guy,’ I did not intend to convey any facts or imply that Unsworth had engaged in acts of pedophilia,” Musk said in a court filing on Monday.

“Pedo guy was a common insult used in South Africa when I was growing up. It is synonymous with ‘creepy old man’ and is used to insult a person’s appearance and demeanor, not accuse a person of pedophila.”

Musk revealed that one of his aides hired a private investigator to conduct an investigation of Unsworth on Musk’s behalf. The private investigator reported back that Unsworth had been travelling to Thailand since the 1980s.

“The investigator learned that Mr Unsworth frequented Pattaya beach which is well known for prostitution and sex tourism, and that Mr Unsworth was unpopular at the rescue site because other rescue workers thought that he was ‘creepy", Musk’s lawyers said in the filing.

The spat between the two erupted after Unsworth dismissed the mini-submarine that Musk and employees at SpaceX had built to assist in the rescue of a group of Thai boys who were trapped in Tham Luang flooded cave in Chiang Rai's Mae Sai district last year.

Unsworth said in a television interview that the mini-submarine, which ultimately wasn’t used in the rescue, was a “PR stunt” and that Musk could “stick his submarine where it hurts.”