SEC goes after Tesla and Elon Musk in the most absurd way over a tweet
Elon Musk's lawyers have now answered the court about the SEC's attempt to get them to hold Tesla's CEO in contempt and it describes how the federal agency goes after the car manufacturer and its executives in a rather absurd way over some undoubtedly meaningless tweets. 19659002] In October, a judge approved the settlement of the SEC's complaint against Musk over his "financially secured" comment on his attempt to take Tesla privately.
One of the conditions of the settlement is that Tesla's board had to get more surveillance of Musk's tweeting, which had to master the statements that could move Tesla's stock.
Last month, the SEC asked a judge to hold Musk contempt to break the government's government with a tweet he posted a week before:
A judge gave Musk two weeks to explain why he should not be disdained for his deal with Tesla. SEC.
In a rather absurd situation, the CEO's lawyers have now produced a 33-page document that defends the benign tweet.
Musk's lawyers claim that the information was not material:
"7:15 tweet was a concise shine on topics that had already been deeply covered in company records and an earnings call with analysts. Any reasonable investor would have read the tweet with reference to the much more thorough information and extensive discussions on the same subject. "
They go into details of where and when the information was already revealed before the tweet:
" Before Musk's admission of 7:15, the subject and substance of The tweet, ie Tesla's projected production and production rates for 2019, published in several documents and discussed the longest in a revenue call. As mentioned above, on January 2, 2019, Tesla sent a form 8-K reporting its output in Q4 2018 of "25161 model S and X vehicles, in accordance with our long-term run of approx. 100,000 per year. "Ex. 1 at 5. Then, during the January 30 revenue interview, Musk said that model 3 production in 2019 would be on the order of" 350,000 to 500,000 "vehicles, eg 3 on 8. Tesla Similarly, in its January 30 update and February 19, Form 10-K revealed that the "targeted annual Model 3 output of over 500,000 units once between Q4 2019 and Q2 2020" 4 by 3. Thus, adding the production estimates for the three models (S, X and 3) together or even considering projections for Model 3 alone, Musk's statement that Tesla would produce "around 500k" "cars" in 2019 was in previously published areas The tweets were simply not "news." "
The document also describes how the SEC sent several inquiries with short deadlines to Tesla and Musk about the situation in their attempt to show that the tweet broke the settlement agreement.
Musk's lawyers argue that what the SEC is doing constitutes an "unconstitutional grip" and they suspect that it is retaliation for what Musk said about the SEC in a recent interview.
In a 60-minute interview, Musk said he has "no respect" for the SEC and he claimed he believes the agency is working to help shorts games against Tesla.
The lawyers wrote in Musk's defense:
"During the interview and in accordance with his First Amendment rights, Musk was strongly critical of the SEC. The SEC is heavily dependent on this interview in its motion for contempt of retribution and censorship."
They claim the SEC invites the tribunal to "trample on Musk's first rights" and they ask to reject the attempt to keep him
More and more back and forth between the two parties is expected before a decision is made.
Here is the full filing with the court:
Electrek's Take
What a crazy world we live in. A billionaire, a car manufacturer, and a federal body responsible for protecting investors, all argue in court over a pretty good tweet.
Does the SEC really sink It is protecting investors here?
Who is this in favor of? Only Tesla shorts and the lawyers are happy about this – and not because they think it is right, but because it is an opportunity to make money.
It should be enough to understand that this is not right.
Now a dozen official letters and legal documents about a single pointless tweet are out there.
It blows me.