April 27 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge accused Elon Musk on Wednesday of trying to evade an agreement with regulators to oversee his tweets at Tesla Inc (TSLA.O), saying the billionaire was “complaining” about the 2018 deal. now that he thinks Tesla was “invincible.”
The decision comes after the board of Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) on Monday accepted Musk’s $ 44 billion deal to buy the social media platform. Read more
The dispute stems from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s claim that Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, defrauded investors on August 7, 2018, tweeting that he had “secured funding” to take the electric car company private. with a premium, when in fact the redemption was not close. Tesla shares rose after the tweet.
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Musk’s lawyers have tried to end a 2018 consent decree that allowed these accusations of SEC securities fraud, arguing that prosecuting the regulator against Musk “crossed the line of harassment” and hindered his constitutional right to liberty. the word. Read more
U.S. District Judge Lewis Lyman in Manhattan rejected those arguments, as well as Musk’s request to block a separate SEC investigation into tweets Musk published last year about the sale of part of his stake in Tesla.
“Musk cannot now seek to withdraw the agreement he deliberately and voluntarily made, simply complaining that he felt he had to agree to it at the time, but now that the specter of litigation is a distant memory. and his company has become his assessment, almost invincible – he wishes he hadn’t, “Lyman wrote.
The 2018 agreement required Musk and Tesla to pay $ 20 million in civil fines and Musk to step down as chairman of Tesla. The consent decree also requires Musk to obtain prior permission from Tesla’s lawyers for tweets and other public statements that could be relevant to Tesla.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Shares of Tesla were about 2.4% higher to $ 897.62, and shares of Twitter fell 2% to $ 48.67 in the afternoon trading.
The SEC’s investigation into Musk’s sale of some of its shares in Tesla is based on tweets he sent on November 6 last year, asking readers if they support his sale of a 10% stake in Tesla and that he will observes the results of the survey. The SEC called on Musk and Tesla to determine if the tweets had been checked before they were published.
The majority of readers supported such a share sale, and the poll led to a drop in Tesla’s share price. Musk has since sold more than $ 16 billion in shares to Tesla.
Lyman said it was not “surprising” that the SEC would have questions about the unusual way Musk decided to sell his shares.
Musk escalated his attacks on the SEC. Earlier this month, he called the regulator “those bastards.” Read more
Musk calls himself an “absolutist of free speech” and criticizes Twitter’s policies that restrict speech and limit harassment.
“By ‘freedom of speech,’ I just mean what complies with the law,” Musk tweeted Tuesday, a day after Twitter’s board of directors accepted his offer. “If people want less freedom of speech, they will ask the government to pass laws in that sense. Therefore, going beyond the law is against the will of the people.”
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Report by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, and Peter Henderson in Oakland, California; Edited by Chizu Nomiyama and Leslie Adler
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