Elon Musk is taking a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook and playing the victim.
Musk got smacked on the hand by the SEC a few years ago after making a post about Tesla stock.
Now he wants to go back on the deal, but the Supreme Court refused to help him.
Can’t Do That
If you recall, Musk had made a post on what was then called Twitter, now X, about how he had purchased enough shares of Tesla stock to turn the company private.
When he made that post, Tesla stock skyrocketed because people were panicking that they would not be able to obtain the stock if Musk went private.
The SEC stepped in and accused Musk of manipulating the stock by making misleading statements on Twitter.
Eventually, a settlement was worked out, with part of that deal being the SEC monitoring posts by Musk on certain subjects.
Musk wanted to revoke the deal, claiming that the SEC was robbing him of his First Amendment rights.
Musk took the SEC to court, but lost, with the appellate court ruling, “We see no evidence to support Musk’s contention that the SEC has used the consent decree to conduct bad-faith, harassing investigations of his protected speech.
“Had Musk wished to preserve his right to tweet without even limited internal oversight concerning certain Tesla-related topics, he had ‘the right to litigate and defend against the [SEC’s] charges’ or to negotiate a different agreement—but he chose not to do so.”
Musk’s lawyers argued, “It extends to speech not covered by the securities laws and with no relation to the conduct underlying the SEC’s civil action against Mr. Musk.”
The Supreme Court did not agree, declining to take the case with no dissenting opinions made public in the case.
At least four members of the court would have had to accept the case in order for it to be heard, so Musk’s team failed to even convince the conservative side of the bench that his First Amendment rights have been violated.
Sorry, Elon, but you made the deal, and now you have to live with it.
