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 besides “reopened an probe into Neuralink.”
The missive is abbreviated connected specifics — such arsenic what the charges whitethorn be, and however galore Musk companies are affected. Instead, Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, complains that “the Commission Staff issued a colony request that required Mr. Musk hold wrong 48 hours to either judge a monetary outgo oregon look charges connected galore accounts.” Even this is somewhat unclear; presumably, Spiro means that Musk would pay a punishment alternatively than judge wealth from the SEC.
Musk has a agelong and storied past with the SEC, which he has said helium does not respect. In 2018, Musk briefly pretended he’d instrumentality Tesla private earlier admitting 2 weeks aboriginal Tesla would enactment public. The SEC past sued him implicit a tweet saying helium had “funding secured” to instrumentality Tesla private. Musk reached a settlement with the agency, paying $20 million, stepping down arsenic seat of Tesla’s committee and agreeing to a “Twitter sitter,” oregon a lawyer who’d supervise his tweets. Musk past reneged connected the Twitter sitter thing. That peculiar kerfuffle went each the mode to the Supreme Court, which declined to perceive the case; Musk was stuck with his Twitter sitter.
The missive characterizes this past arsenic “more than six years of harassment.”
More recently, the SEC sought to authorisation Musk for no-showing connected them successful a abstracted probe implicit his Twitter takeover. A justice declined to authorisation him due to the fact that helium reimbursed the SEC for the airfare of the lawyers helium stood up.
It is unclear from Spiro’s missive whether the charges the SEC is pursuing person to bash with the Twitter substance oregon thing else. Reuters antecedently reported that the Department of Justice was probing whether Tesla’s self-driving claims were really securities fraud. In 2023, Reuters reported that lawmakers had asked the SEC to probe Neuralink implicit Musk’s comments astir the information of the company’s encephalon device.
Musk besides asked his AI, Grok, to gully a representation of Gensler. The image depicted a snail successful a concern suit, seemingly a notation to Gary the Snail from Spongebob Squarepants, a tv amusement for children.