Tesla CEO Elon Musk testified again as a witness Monday in a trial over whether he deliberately misled investors when he tweeted that he had «secured» funds to take the electric carmaker private.
Musk will resume testimony that began Friday afternoon, in which he told a nine-person Northern California jury that his tweets are truthful but are limited by Twitter’s 280-character count.
Musk is being sued by Tesla investors who claim the August 2018 private tweet caused them to lose substantial sums of money. US Judge Edward Chen has already ruled that the tweet was false and reckless, but Musk thinks he can convince the jury that he did not know the tweet was false when he sent it and that, in any case, the movements of the stock price of Tesla are not directly tied to his tweets.
«Just because I tweet something doesn’t mean people believe it or act on it,» Musk told a jury Friday in San Francisco federal court.
Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, told jurors in opening remarks last week that Musk believed he had financing from Saudi backers and was taking steps to make the deal happen. Fearing media leaks, Musk tried to protect the «common shareholder» by sending the tweet, which contained «technical inaccuracies,» Spiro said.
But Nicholas Porritt, a lawyer for the shareholders, argues that Musk knew a deal between Tesla and Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund had not yet materialized.
Trial is a rarity: Most shareholder lawsuits are dismissed or settled out of court. In 2019, Musk convinced another jury that he did not malign British cave diver Vern Unsworth when he called Unsworth «fart boy» in another 2018 tweet.
When asked Friday about requests from Twitter stakeholders to avoid tweeting, Musk said he couldn’t recall them. Musk now owns Twitter, having completed his purchase of the social media platform last fall.