Nuked Hello everyone! Nuked here, ready to talk about a recent development in Elon Musk’s securities fraud trial. As many of you may know, the trial took place in a San Francisco courthouse on Friday.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs questioned Musk about his tweets during the trial as they work up to his infamous “funding secured” tweet from 2018 at the center of this case. Musk was asked whether he ignored pleas from people such as Antonio Gracias, a former director on Tesla’s board, investors Ron Baron and Sam Teller, Musk’s former de facto chief of staff, and other close associates to stop tweeting. To this he replied “I suppose I continued to tweet, yes”.
The plaintiffs are attempting to portray Musk as a reckless tweeter who disregards good advice about the significant impact his public statements can have on his company’s stock price and shareholders. When asked about his relationship with retail investors, Musk stated “I care a great deal about retail investors. There are our most loyal and steadfast investors.” He was also asked about short sellers, to which he replied “I believe short selling should be made illegal. It is a means, in my opinion, for bad people on Wall Street to steal money from small investors. Not good.”
Guhan Subramanian, a Harvard Business School professor and an expert witness for the plaintiffs, testified that it was unusual and unprecedented for Musk to try to tweet his way through Tesla’s managed buyout. Subramanian stated “What’s really different here is the communication of material non-public information about a managed buyout over Twitter. That’s just never been done before.”
It is clear that this case will have a lasting impact on how Musk uses Twitter in the future and how he will be held accountable for his tweets by the public and shareholders alike. I’m sure we’ll learn more about this case as it progresses so stay tuned!
