A lawyer for Musk claimed in a court filing that the Securities and Exchange Commission is harassing the car company and Musk to muzzle his criticism of the government. Alex Spiro wrote a letter to the US District Judge in New York that said the SEC is "weaponizing" the settlement between Musk and the SEC.
Musk had to impose controls on his social media statements. The SEC said in a lawsuit that Musk had not even discussed, much less confirmed, key deal terms, including price, with any potential funding source.
The SEC has been using the consent decree to try to muzzle and harass Mr. Musk, while ignoring its Court-ordered duty to remit the $40 million that it continues to hold. The SEC seems to be targeting Mr. Musk because he is an outspoken critic of the government.
The outspoken critic of the government could refer to many Musk statements.
Although he says he and his children are vaccine free, Musk recently called vaccine mandates an erosion of freedom. He criticized shelter-in-place orders and disobeyed a factory shutdown order early in the Pandemic. Musk deleted the meme after Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau was compared to Hitler.
AdvertisementThe SEC has criticized Musk for his statements about the finances and business of the company. In an SEC filing this month, the company said that the SEC subpoenaed them in November of 2021.
The SEC alleged that Musk failed to control his social media statements. Despite repeated violations by Mr. Musk, the SEC said in a May 2020 letter that the company failed to enforce the settlement requirements.
The $40 million in fines over Musk's tweets aboutTesla are supposed to be distributed to harmed investors under a court-approved process according to the SEC. The SEC has failed to comply with its promise to pay the shareholders it collected as part of the settlement in these cases and that it purports to be holding for them, according to the letter. It has been spending its resources on investigations into Mr. Musk.
The SEC has failed to distribute these funds to shareholders but has chosen to spend its energy and resources investigating Mr. Musk.
The settlement with the SEC would end the harassment of the SEC and make this Court, and not the SEC alone, the monitor over, so they agreed to the consent decree. The letter claimed that the SEC has broken its promises.
Although the SEC appointed a tax administrator and distribution agent for the funds, the agency has yet to announce anything like a distribution plan. The SEC has taken twenty times longer than it should have.
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