Elon Musk still cannot get away with regulating tweets about Tesla!
Elon Musk Tweets: SEC Continues to Regulate
Elon Musk has stated that he wants to tweet freely in his account. However, the nation's top securities regulator urged the federal judge not to allow Elon Musk to avoid a court order requiring that his Twitter activity be monitored.
Elon Musk's tweets have been monitored for a few years now. This is part of the agreement between Musk, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the federal court. However, the Tesla chief executive considers the arrangement to be a part of a harassment campaign.
As reported by Reuters, the United States securities regulators have legal rights to release a subpoena to Tesla CEO Elon Musk about his tweets if the tweet is categorized as harassment, false, and misleading.
In addition, the recent U.S. SEC filing in the federal court in Manhattan states that Elon Musk is not in a high-burden situation for Musk to breach the agreement.
Tesla CEO had a consent decree in 2018 requiring Musk to preapprove his tweets and public statements about his electric vehicle company to his lawyers before publishing them.
Elon Musk Tweets: Mishaps with SEC
Elon Musk has a longstanding struggle with the SEC which resulted in his tweets about Tesla being regulated by his lawyers first before publishing.
This all started in 2018 when Musk published tweets stating that he was considering making Tesla private at $420 a share and shareholders could either sell or hold.
Shareholders could either to sell at 420 or hold shares & go private
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018
When Musk published those tweets, it made a huge impact, moving the market plummeting the shares of the company as high as 13%, which lead to market disruption instantaneously even in the after hours of trading.
With that, the SEC filed a complaint to the court in the Southern District of New York against Tesla CEO Elon Musk, stating that his tweets on August 7 are false and misleading.
According to TechCrunch, Musk stated, "This unjustified action by the SEC leaves me deeply saddened and disappointed. I have always taken action in the best interests of truth, transparency and investors. Integrity is the most important value in my life and the facts will show I never compromised this in any way."
In November 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States issued a new subpoena to Tesla.
Despite having previously agreed to a settlement with the SEC, Musk came under fire again last year when he asked his Twitter followers if he should sell 10% of his stake in Tesla, causing the company's stock to plummet. As a result, Tesla's stock price plummeted.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York SEC regulator Melissa Armstrong wrote in a filing that Musk agreed in 2018 to comply with Tesla's mandatory procedures requiring pre-approval of certain of his Tesla-related public communications as part of a settlement of the SEC's action against him.
However, according to the SEC, "Musk cannot now cast off the Amended Final Judgment simply because he has found complying with Tesla's procedures to be less convenient than he had hoped, or because he wishes the SEC would not investigate whether Tesla's disclosure controls and procedures are actually being maintained and followed."
