Elon Musk offers half-hearted apology for spreading conspiracy theory about attack on Paul Pelosi

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has addressed his participation in a conspiracy theory about a home invasion at the residence of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul, in which Mr Pelosi was brutally attacked.

But he has done so indirectly — in a tweet reply to a woman most famous for accusing former President Bill Clinton of rape.

Mr Musk has long been hounded by journalists — most prominently MSNBC’s Medhi Hasan — for his promotion of a conspiracy spread by right-wing commentators about the attack on Mr Pelosi by a man who broke into his home.

The conspiracy posited that the attack was not motivated by Ms Pelosi’s status as one of the most prominent Democrats in the country, but rather the result of an imaginary lover’s quarrel between her husband and the man who was arrested after the incident.

That theory was contradicted by the statements of the suspect himself to police shortly after the incident, but was left uncorrected by Mr Musk.

“There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” he tweeted last fall, while linking to a story in a small California-based news outlet that has been accused of spreading misinformation.