Elon Musk told jurors he tweets about Tesla and memes, but be wary of connecting the car company’s stock price to the comments he makes on the platform.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk appeared in a fraud trial in California on Friday, accused of lying in tweets about privatizing the auto company, punishing investors. private.
Musk has been subpoenaed by lawyers to testify to angry investors who accuse him of costing them millions of dollars in 2018 with false information. tweets about having expense guaranteed to buy out all shareholders at $420 a share.
The billionaire’s tweets have sent Tesla’s stock price up like a roller coaster, and Musk has been sued by shareholders who say the tycoon acted recklessly in an attempt to squeeze investors. The investor has bet on the company.
Musk, who acquired Twitter itself in October, downplayed the strength of his tweets, noting under suspicion that he had once posted that he thought Tesla stock was too high and “it’s gone high.” rather, this is counter-intuitive.”
“What I’m trying to say is cause and effect obviously not there simply because a tweet“, Musk said in a testimony that lasted only thirty minutes and will be continued on Monday.
Friday’s hearing began with Harvard business and law professor Guhan Subramanian, who the plaintiffs called an expert witness.
He called Musk’s Twitter-posted proposal to privatize Tesla an “illusion” and a “mistake” in terms of how it wildly deviates from the way such big deals usually play out.
“All I can say is that this is completely wrong; was an issue in the settlement process… this is not true,” Subramanian said when questioned by defense attorneys about Musk’s tweets. .
The words ‘reckless’
Testimonies in the trial opening Wednesday with lawyers for the upset investors told the jury that Musk lied about having funding in place.
Attorney Nicholas Porritt, who represents lead plaintiff Glen Littleton and other Tesla investors, said Musk’s tweets cost “ordinary people” millions of dollars.
Nicholas Porritt, who represents principal plaintiff Glen Littleton and other Tesla Investorssaid the tweets cost “ordinary people” “millions of millions of dollars.”
Called the first witness, Littleton, 71, told the jury that he invested heavily in Tesla in 2018 in a way that sent the stock price up $500 or more.
Littleton testified that he was “quite shocked” by Musk’s tweet about taking the company private for $420 a year. To share because it threatened almost all of the money he had invested in Tesla.
“It would wipe me out a lot,” Littleton said.
Littleton told jurors he tried to save what he could from his investments, exiting most of his positions at a large loss.
Musk is expected to continue to testify at the trial on Monday, when his lawyers will have a chance to refute allegations that he cheated.
The case revolved around a pair of tweets in which Musk said “funding is guaranteed” for the publicly traded electric carmaker’s acquisition project, later in a second tweet adding that “Investors Support confirmed.”
Porritt told the jury that Musk chose a price tag of $420. stock price in the tweet “as a joke” and that funding to privatize Tesla was never locked away, nor was it reliably pursued.
In his own opening remarks, Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro said that while the tweets may have been a “reckless choice of words,” they were “not a scam, not even a scam.” close.”
The fraud trial is expected to last three weeks.
© 2023 AFP
quote: Elon Musk stands during Tesla tweet fraud trial (2023, january 21) taken January 21, 2023 from https://techxplore.com/news/2023-01-elon-musk-tesla- tweet-fraud.html
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