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As ordered, Tesla's chief executive, Elon Musk, addressed his response to the Securities and Exchange Commission, disputing the agency's claim that he was in contempt when he had launched tweets about Tesla's production numbers last month.
In the filing, Musk claims that the SEC is trying to expand the terms of its settlement last year by limiting its speech on Twitter and that by doing so, it seeks to violate its rights to the Premier. amendment.
Musk also claims that he "diligently tried to comply" with the SEC and that the SEC's use of his comments during his interview with "60 Minutes" of the CBS as evidence of his violation reflected an "excessive and unprecedented reach on the part of the President". SECOND."
All this comes down to the "secure financing" & # 39;
All this drama goes back to last August, when Musk tweeted that he had funding to privatize Tesla at $ 420 a share. He does not have it.
The SEC therefore fined Mr. Tesla $ 20 million each, claiming that his false statement illegally manipulated Tesla's stock. As part of this settlement, Musk was ordered to run all the tweets containing important statements on Tesla via a Twitter czar, somehow.
Last month, Musk tweeted that Tesla would make 500,000 cars in 2019 – a figure 25% higher than Tesla expected in its deposits. Musk, a few hours later, corrects the tweet by saying that he meant that Tesla would reach an annualized output of 500,000 cars between Q4 2019 and Q2 2020.
But the damage was done. The day after the tweet, Tesla's chief counsel resigned and, a week later, the SEC filed a lawsuit alleging that Musk was contempt of court. The SEC quoted not only the tweet of 500,000 cars, but also an interview with Musk with "60 Minutes" in which he criticized the SEC and admitted that Twitter's czar did not check all his tweets.
He told interviewer Leslie Stahl that he could "make mistakes". The mistakes, like his rights to the first amendment and the idea that the agency is trying to take revenge on him, are largely at the root of Musk's rebuttal to the SEC.
"The SEC's main evidence that Musk has not been diligent in his efforts to comply with the order is made up of extracts from an interview that he granted 60 Minutes … During the interview, and in accordance with his first-amendment rights, Musk strongly criticized The crackdown of the SEC is based on the fact that the SEC relies heavily on this interview in his request for contempt of Parliament constitutes a smell of reprisal and censorship.
Mistakes
Musk argued that his tweet about making 500,000 cars was not important to Tesla and therefore he did not deserve to be examined by Twitter's czar.
"Musk was justifiably proud of the work that he and his team had done to get Tesla to a point where it no longer produced cars to the point of producing hundreds of thousands of vehicles. of the materiality standard, Musk's pride and the optimistic reprocessing of publicly disclosed information, occurring after the market closes, "dramatically alter" the total composition of information available to investors, "said the Musk file.
In fact, Musk's tweet testified to his diligence in following the SEC's order, since he had then spoken to his Twitter czar. The CEO "reasonably" had decided that the tweet – despite the fact that it contained a prospective projection – did not require prior approval.
Taking Musk's ability to use his own judgment as to what is or is not important, the answer argues that this amounts to censorship and expands the initial order of the SEC by turning it into an "unconstitutional takeover" .
"In addition to violating the first amendment, the seizure by the SEC of the power to censor the speech, even when that speech does not violate the laws that the SEC is empowered to enforce, would imply concerns of separation of powers," reads in the defense of Musk.
The answer also indicates that Musk's tweet was, more or less, in line with the statements he had made before – although previous statements, such as Tesla's fourth quarter update, clearly indicated that Musk was talking from the outset about annualized production.
If you have already worked with Tesla or Elon Musk, call me at [email protected].
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