The SEC Delivered Another Subpoena to Tesla Over CEO Elon Musk’s Tweets

In a financial filing from the company revealed on Monday, electric vehicle maker Tesla has revealed that the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has delivered yet another subpoena in an ongoing conflict over its founder Elon Musk’s tweets.

The most latest subpoena came in Nov. 2021, shortly after Tesla CEO Elon Musk conducted a Twitter “poll” on whether he should sell 10% of his shares.

While they voted yes, a major portion of the sales that followed the Twitter poll were part of a plan that Musk adopted in September.

The financial regulator is trying to determine whether Musk and Tesla complied with a revised settlement agreement that the agency struck with them in 2019, after Musk’s infamous tweet saying that Tesla had “funding secured” to take the company private at $420 a share.

Musk has continued to use the social media platform spontaneously.

According to Tesla’s filing, the SEC is seeking information on the company’s “governance processes around compliance with the SEC settlement, as amended.”

It was in 2018 that the SEC charged Musk with fraud after he tweeted that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 per share. The tweet sent Tesla’s stock see-sawing for weeks.

The SEC also sued Tesla.

The company and Musk eventually settled with the SEC, with an agreement calling for a legal and regulatory compliance point person at Tesla to pre-approve any of Musk’s tweets containing any information about the publicly traded company that could affect its stock price. Musk also had to relinquish the role of chairman of the board at Tesla for three years, and the company and the CEO each had to pay a $20 million fine.

In 2020, Musk called the SEC the “shortseller enrichment commission,” and wrote a veiled profanity in reference to the agency.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.