A group of Tesla shareholders who sued CEO Elon Musk has asked a judge to stop Musk from talking about the case in public.
The shareholders, who sued Musk over a 2018 tweet alleging that he had the funding required to take Tesla private, claimed in a Friday filing that the judge overseeing the shareholders’ case has ruled Musk’s tweets were false and that he is attempting to influence the jury involved in the case.
The filing asked that the court file a temporary restraining order against Musk to stop him from talking about the legal battle with Tesla shareholders and his 2018 claims of being able to go private, according to court documents reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
The filing arose after Musk repeated his claim that he had funding secured for Tesla in 2018 during an interview at TED 2022 last week. Musk described the Securities and Exchange Commission as “b******s” during the talk and said he paid a $20 million settlement to the SEC so bankers would stop threatening to provide capital if he didn’t settle with the regulatory agency in September 2018.
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Tesla shareholders initially filed the lawsuit against Musk in August 2018.
The SEC settlement included a requirement that Musk have an attorney review any tweets that could affect Tesla’s stock. Tesla has failed to adhere to that requirement, according to a July 2021 ruling. That failure led to Tesla shareholders suing Musk in December 2021 over his tweets affecting the stock market. Musk filed a request on March 8 to scrap his 2018 settlement with the SEC, claiming the Twitter oversight condition has been “unworkable.”
This is not the only legal action Musk faces. Twitter shareholders sued the Tesla CEO over his decision to delay disclosing his acquisition of Twitter stock until April.
Musk has regularly attacked the SEC, claiming it targets him with investigations. He described the regulatory agency as the “shortseller enrichment commission” days after his 2018 settlement. Others, including fellow billionaire Mark Cuban, have argued that Musk’s attempt to purchase Twitter is him “f***ing with the SEC.”
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Musk captured the business world’s attention when he sent a letter to Twitter’s board of directors last week offering to purchase all of the company’s stock. That decision was not well received by Twitter’s board or its employees. The board announced on Friday that it was adopting a “poison pill” approach to its stock that would make a hostile acquisition of Twitter stock significantly harder. Twitter’s employees also expressed their ire about the potential acquisition to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. Agrawal emphasized that the company has not been “taken hostage” by the offer and is reviewing Musk’s proposal accordingly.
