Elon Musk's tweets about Texas mall gunman spread misleading claims, question shooter's background

 WASHINGTON (AP) — Misleading claims about the neo-Nazi gunman responsible for Saturday's mass shooting at a Dallas-area shopping center are reverberating across Twitter, in large part because of Twitter owner Elon Musk. 

“We do know he had neo-Nazi ideation,” Texas Department of Public Safety Regional Director Hank Sibley said a news conference on Tuesday. “He had patches. He had tattoos.” 

Musk also cast doubt on a Netherlands-based research group known as Bellingcat that released information about Garcia's online history when he tweeted that it “specializes in psychological operations.” He offered no evidence to support his claim, but the attack led to a barrage of harassment directed at Bellingcat from Musk's online fans.