Elon Musk Faces SEC Showdown Over Twitter Acquisition: Testimony Drama Unfolds!
The US Securities and Exchange Commission dropped some surprising news this past Thursday. They’ve set their sights on none other than Elon Musk, the billionaire, in connection with their investigation into his acquisition of Twitter, which now goes by the name X. Now, here’s where it gets interesting: Mr. Musk, well, he missed his appointment for testimony on September 15. You see, he had been asked to testify by the SEC through a subpoena. It hadn’t looked as though the first time, he didn’t care much when they served him with it. Funny enough, but just 48 hours before the scheduled testimony, he changed his mind and informed the SEC that he wouldn’t be testifying.
Mr. Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, spoke on this issue too. He sent an email statement last Thursday, which stated, “The SEC has already requested Mr. Musk to answer questions several times before in this investigation, and he is fed up of it.”
The SEC’s been poking around things that happened before Mr. Musk taking the company private with a tweet last year when it was still publicly traded and wants to see if anyone broke any securities laws at that time. But let me clarify: they haven’t said anyone did break the law.
Now, just to give you some background, Mr. Musk went through a lot to buy Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022. There was a long legal battle with the old leadership of the social media company. In April 2022, he even tried to back out of the deal, which led to Twitter suing him to make sure he went through with it.
So, the SEC started an investigation in April 2022 to check if any securities laws were broken when Mr. Musk bought Twitter stock and talked about it in his SEC filings. In the same month, Twitter shareholders in New York filed a lawsuit, claiming that Mr. Musk didn’t tell everyone that he had a big stake in the company soon enough, which hurt smaller investors who sold their shares before he admitted it.
A judge named Andrew Carter had something to say about this case last week. He didn’t buy the idea that Mr. Musk was “too busy” to follow SEC rules while buying Twitter stock, tweeting about Twitter, and meeting with Twitter folks. However, he did toss out part of the lawsuit that said Mr. Musk was involved in insider trading.
Now the SEC is telling us about their court filing on Thursday. They don’t say all what beans they’ve spilled about what their investigation’s over but instead argue that it’s their job to protect investors and they have the power to investigate. And besides, they think Mr. Musk should be lacking in reason not to cooperate.
Mr. Musk declined to testify in San Francisco because he doesn’t live there. But the SEC offered that he could meet them at any of their 11 offices, even one in Fort Worth, Texas, nearer his home. On September 24, Mr. Musk’s lawyers said he wouldn’t testify anywhere.
There’s a twist with a biography about Mr. Musk written by Walter Isaacson. It came out on September 12, and Mr. Musk’s lawyers said they needed time to read it because it might have relevant info. The SEC thinks that’s not a good enough reason to dodge a subpoena, especially since Mr. Musk had plenty of time to check it out after his initial refusal.
