Elon Musk seeks to end US restrictions on his tweets
Elon Musk has asked a federal judge to terminate his 2018 agreement with the top US securities regulator requiring some of his tweets to be vetted by a lawyer.
Musk also asked the judge to block a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) subpoena requesting records of pre-approval of a Twitter poll he conducted in November on potentially selling some of his stock.
“The SEC’s pursuit of Mr Musk has crossed the line into harassment, which is quintessential bad faith,” Musk’s lawyers wrote on Tuesday to US District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan.
Musk’s lawyers said the 2018 consent decree resolving SEC securities fraud charges should not allow “roving and unbounded investigations” into the Tesla CEO, while impeding his constitutional right to free speech.
Legal analysts said Musk’s push to end the consent decree may fail.
“The SEC clearly has authority to enforce a consent decree issued by a federal court without having to conduct a new investigation,” said Urska Velikonja, a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
“Apart from concerns that the consent decree is overbroad and difficult to enforce, which seem plausible, Musk’s other legal arguments are an exercise in legal silliness,” she added.
In early November, Musk posted on Twitter that he would offload 10% of his Tesla stake if users approved.
A majority did, and the poll sent Tesla shares into a slump. Musk has since sold $16.4bn of stock.
The tweet renewed questions about whether Musk complied with his SEC agreement to obtain approval from a Tesla lawyer before issuing written communications about information material to his company or its shareholders.
Tesla said on Tuesday that Musk’s tweet on stock sales “is behavior the SEC should encourage: a CEO’s
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