SEC Shoots Down Elon Musk’s Efforts to Escape ‘Funding Secured’ Deal

Elon Musk made an attempt to wriggle out of a settlement he made with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)—but the regulator is having none of it.

A letter sent from the SEC to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York this week insisted that a 2018 settlement agreement between the regulator and the Tesla (TSLA) co-founder is constitutional and valid.

SEC Wants to Enforce Previous Settlement

The case, SEC v. Musk, No. 22-1291, relates to a 2018 tweet by Musk, who claimed that he had the “funding secured” to take Tesla private.

In response to his tweet, the SEC charged Musk with civil securities fraud after an investigation, and the billionaire reached a settlement with regulators in 2018.

The settlement required that Tesla and Musk each pay $20 million fines and Musk was ordered to relinquish his role as chairman of the board at Tesla for three years. Musk also agreed to have a so-called “Twitter sitter”— a securities lawyer who is on hand to review all of Musk’s tweets relating to Tesla before they go live.

In a letter to the New York appeals court this week, Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro pointed to a verdict in a separate shareholder class action trial in San Francisco on Feb. 2, where Spiro and Musk convinced jurors that the Tesla CEO did not violate securities laws with his 2018 tweets.

However, the SEC argued in this week’s letter that “Musk waived his opportunity to test the Commission’s allegations at trial when he voluntarily agreed (twice) to a consent judgment.”

Legal Woes Will Take a Back Seat to Investor Day

Tesla’s legal issues will soon take a back seat to the automaker’s 2023 Investor Day, which will be live-streamed from the company’s Texas Gigafactory.

Inside EVs has reported this could be a “historic moment” if speculation that Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y will be redesigned is proven true.

Tesla’s recent fourth-quarter earnings sparked a rally of around 60% in the company’s share price after it announced another record-breaking quarter and year. Tesla reported its highest-ever quarterly revenue, operating income, and net income.

For the full year 2022, total revenue grew 51% year-over-year to $81.5B with net income (GAAP) more than doubling to $12.6B.