Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X (formerly known as Twitter), is being sued for defamation over posts he made falsely accusing a man of pretending to be a neo-Nazi to stir up a “false flag” operation earlier this year.

In June, a fight broke out between two far-right groups at an Oregon City pride festival. Footage of the fight circulated across social media, and soon, users started falsely claiming one of the men was a federal agent and attempted to identify him. Brody was wrongfully identified as the man in the video. Musk replied to several false X posts about Brody, amplifying them to his more than 147 million followers at the time. 

On June 27th, Musk replied to a post containing a video of the fight alleging that Brody was part of a “false flag” operation. “Looks like one is a college student (who wants to join the govt) and another is maybe an Antifa member, but nonetheless a probably false flag situation,” Musk wrote on X. As of publication, Musk has not deleted the post. 

“Being defamed by someone as famous as Musk was an utterly terrifying experience, and it has left Ben stunned, disoriented, and worried about the consequences on his future,” Mark Bankston, Brody’s lawyer, wrote on X Monday. 

Bankston previously represented two Sandy Hook parents in a case against Alex Jones, the notorious conspiracy theorist who falsely peddled the lie that the 2012 shooting never happened. The parents won $45 million in damages. 

In the suit, Brody claims that he and his family were forced out of their home due to the harassment campaign that they argue was amplified by Musk’s posts due to “a huge number of people” who “believed he was either a neo-Nazi or a provocateur in a ‘psyop’ to commit political terrorism on American soil.”