Regulators Warned Tesla Over Musk’s Twitter. This Stock Just Moved After a New Tweet.
Tweets from Elon Musk in 2019 and 2020 violated a court order, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images
Elon Musk’s use of Twitter has twice violated a court order requiring his tweets be vetted by Tesla’s lawyers, The Wall Street Journal reported late on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, shares in Samsung Publishing moved higher, after new tweets from the chief executive of the electric-vehicle company, while cryptocurrency asset dogecoin soared after Musk posted a related meme.
After tweeting about his love of the children’s song “Baby Shark,” shares in Samsung Publishing —an owner of the song’s producer, unrelated to the South Korean group Samsung —rose as much as 10%, before settling 6% higher in Seoul. Dogecoin was up 27%, after Musk tweeted a meme with the Shiba Inu dog associated with the crypto asset.
According to documents obtained by the Journal, the Securities and Exchange Commission told Tesla in 2019 and 2020 that tweets from Musk about Tesla’s solar roof production volumes and the company’s stock price had not undergone the required preapproval by corporate lawyers. The communications from the SEC haven’t been previously reported. The SEC, Tesla and Musk didn’t respond to the Journal’s requests for comment.
“Tesla has abdicated the duties required of it,” a senior SEC official reportedly said in a letter to the electric-vehicle company.
Tesla and the SEC settled an enforcement action in 2018 over a tweet from Musk that saw both him and the company pay $20 million—and agree that his public statements on social media be overseen by Tesla’s lawyers.
What’s next: Musk publicly mocked the SEC after settling the fraud claims in 2018, but the communications revealed by the Journal show that regulators may have the last laugh. Beyond tweets, Musk and Tesla have a history of clashing with transportation and occupational safety regulators over enforcement attempts in the past.
