Elon Musk loses bid to lift screening of tweets about Tesla
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has lost a bid to lift a screening process on his tweets about Tesla.
The new owner of Twitter had agreed for his social media posts to be looked at by a lawyer in 2018, and sought to remove the oversight.
The entrepreneur, who recently said the electric car firm was “all but invincible”, claimed the regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission had “crossed the line into harassment” and broken his constitutional right to freedom of speech.
He hit out at the commission branding them “bastards” earlier in March, as he looked to have the agreement lifted.
However, the judge ruled he can’t get out of the agreement “by simply bemoaning that he felt like he had to agree to it at the time but now once the specter of the litigation is a distant memory and his company has become, in his estimation, all but invincible wishes that he had not.”
Musk, who bought the social media site for more than $40bn this month, entered into the agreement after making a series of statements on Twitter which had a major impact on Tesla’s shares.
He asked his 80m Twitter followers if he should sell his 10 per cent stake in the firm.
Tesla’s price plummeted after the poll – and Musk has since sold $16bn worth of shares in it.
After his purchase of Twitter, Tesla’s shares plunged, as Musk looked to shore up the cash for the social media deal.