Elon Musk Can’t Help Himself

Remember when Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk committed securities fraud by falsely claiming on Twitter that he had secured financing to take Tesla private? Remember how Musk and Tesla settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission by agreeing to pay fines and have Tesla lawyers review Musk’s tweets before he sent them out? Remember how Tesla hired a high-powered Washington litigator as its general counsel and Musk’s Twitter babysitter? Remember how Musk then said in a 60 Minutes interview that he and Tesla were absolutely not ever going to comply with the terms of the settlement that they had signed, that he does not respect the SEC, and that no lawyer would ever pre-clear his tweets? How’s that working out?

“Meant to say annualized production rate at end of 2019 probably around 500k, ie 10k cars/week,” Musk tweeted, four hours after saying it would make 500,000 cars in 2019. “Deliveries for year still estimated to be about 400k.” It was all after trading hours, so whatever, but it’s the principle of the thing. The principle apparently being that Musk should have an absolutely unfettered right, as the CEO of a large public company, to make false statements of material fact about the financial and operational results of his company, whenever he wants. “Hello, First Amendment,” Musk actually said, once, on television, about this subject.