Elon Musk Is Mad At The Sec Again

The Securities and Exchange Commission is preparing “numerous counts” against Elon Musk, according to a missive from his lawyer that Musk posted to X. It has too “reopened an investigation into Neuralink.”

The missive is short connected specifics — such arsenic what nan charges whitethorn be, and really galore Musk companies are affected. Instead, Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, complains that “the Commission Staff issued a colony petition that required Mr. Musk activity together incorrect 48 hours to either judge a monetary costs aliases look charges connected galore accounts.” Even this is somewhat unclear; presumably, Spiro intends that Musk would salary a reward alternatively than judge money from nan SEC.

Musk has a agelong and storied history pinch nan SEC, which he has said he does not respect. In 2018, Musk concisely pretended he’d return Tesla backstage earlier admitting 2 weeks later Tesla would enactment public. The SEC past sued him complete a tweet saying he had “funding secured” to return Tesla private. Musk reached a colony pinch nan agency, paying $20 million, stepping down arsenic chair of Tesla’s committee and agreeing to a “Twitter sitter,” aliases a lawyer who’d supervise his tweets. Musk past reneged connected nan Twitter sitter thing. That peculiar kerfuffle went each nan measurement to nan Supreme Court, which declined to comprehend nan case; Musk was stuck pinch his Twitter sitter.

The missive characterizes this history arsenic “more than six years of harassment.”

More recently, nan SEC sought to reward Musk for no-showing connected them successful a abstracted investigation complete his Twitter takeover. A judge declined to reward him because he reimbursed nan SEC for nan airfare of nan lawyers he stood up.

It is unclear from Spiro’s missive whether nan charges nan SEC is pursuing personification to do pinch nan Twitter matter aliases point else. Reuters antecedently reported that nan Department of Justice was probing whether Tesla’s self-driving claims were really securities fraud. In 2023, Reuters reported that lawmakers had asked nan SEC to probe Neuralink complete Musk’s comments astir nan accusation of nan company’s encephalon device.

Musk too asked his AI, Grok, to necktie a image of SEC chair Gary Gensler. The image depicted a snail successful a business suit, seemingly a reference to Gary nan Snail from Spongebob Squarepants, a tv show for children.