DETROIT (AP) – Elon Musk’s request to cancel the deal with securities regulators on Twitter 2018, in which he says he has funds to transfer Tesla to private property, has been rejected by a New federal judge. York.
Judge Lewis Lyman also dismissed a motion Wednesday to dismiss Musk’s subpoena seeking information on possible violations of his agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Musk asked the court to cancel the deal, requiring approval of his tweets before Tesla’s attorney could post. The SEC is investigating whether a Tesla chief executive violated an agreement in November in tweets asking Twitter followers if he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock.
The whole controversy stemmed from a deal with the SEC in October 2018 in which Musk and Tesla agreed to pay $ 20 million in civil penalties for using Musk’s tweets to “fund” Musk at Tesla for $ 420 per share.
Funding has not been blocked and the electric car company remains public, but Tesla’s share price has risen. The deal marks management changes, including the resignation of Musk’s chairman of the board, as well as the initial approval of his tweets.
Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro said the SEC was using retaliation and “virtually unlimited resources” to calm Musk’s speech. Musk is said to have signed the deal when Tesla was a less mature company and SEC stock threatened to finance the company.
He also said the summons to the SEC was illegal and that the agency could not act on Musk’s tweets without the court’s permission.
But in a 22-page decision, Lyman wrote that Musk’s statement that economic pressure led him to sign the deal was “completely unconvincing.”
“While Muskie fears that the SEC litigation will damage Tesla financially,” it does not form the basis for a decision to be voluntarily signed, Lyman wrote.
The judge also said the argument that the SEC used the settlement order to harass Musk and start an investigation was “nonsense.”
“Musk could hardly have imagined that when he entered into the (agreement) ordinance he would be immune from non -public investigation by the SEC,” Lyman wrote. “It wasn’t clear when Musk tweeted that he was considering selling his 10% stake in Tesla … The SEC will have some questions.
He left a message on Wednesday asking Spiro to comment that Muskie would challenge Liman’s order.
Source: Huffpost
