Elon Musk laughs off being forced to delete lurid Paul Pelosi conspiracy tweet

Elon Musk has attempted to laugh off criticism for sharing an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory on Twitter about the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul last week.

Mr Musk, who confirmed on Thursday night that he would buy the social network for $44bn, shared a link on Sunday to a news article claiming without evidence that Mr Pelosi had met his attacker in a San Francisco gay bar that night.

After deleting his tweet on Sunday night, Mr Musk posted a screenshot of a New York Times headline reporting that he had shared content from a website "known to publish false news", with a joking rebuttal: "This is fake – I did not tweet out a link to The New York Times!"

Mr Musk did not give any reason for deleting the tweet.

San Francisco authorities have said that Mr Pelosi's attacker was a stranger who broke into the family's home at around 2am on Friday searching for Nancy Pelosi, who is the Speaker of the US House of Representatives and a major hate figure for the far right.

Police identified the attacker as a 42-year-old man named David DePape, and said officers had witnessed him "violently" assaulting Mr Pelosi, 82, with a hammer.

Prosecutors added that Mr DePape was carrying zip ties and duct tape, while the San Francisco Examiner uncovered a blog in Mr DePape's name full of extreme right wing content, including support for QAnon.

But Mr Musk, who is the richest person on Earth, was apparently swayed to believe there "might be more to this story" by an opinion article on a website called the Santa Monica Observer, reportedly run by former city council candidate David Ganezer.

With a headline that began "The Awful Truth...", it claimed that Mr DePape was a male sex worker brought home from a San Francisco gay bar by Mr Pelosi – citing only "rumour", "a theory related to me by a source", and "my humble opinion".

Previous articles by the Observer have claimed that sunlight can treat Covid-19 (it can’t), that Kanye West had been appointed to a government position by Donald Trump (he hadn’t), and that Ms Clinton would face a criminal indictment "very soon" (she didn’t).

Those and other supposed scoops led the fake news rating firm NewsGuard to last year brand the Observer "anything but trustworthy", giving it a "trust score" of only 12.5 out of 100.

On Sunday afternoon the Observer responded to criticism of its Paul Pelosi article, saying: "The story is sourced. It is also posted as opinion, and is largely based on facts that are available to everyone."

Mr Musk has previously pledged not to turn Twitter into "a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences".