Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk told the jury in a federal court hearing a civil case brought by Twitter investors that posts he made in the run up to his 2022 purchase of the social media platform were just him thinking out loud and were not an effort to drive down the share price. File Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI | License Photo
Elon Musk denied using his high-profile in the online world to make some investors in the then-Twitter fear he was pulling out of buying the social media platform, telling a San Francisco federal jury that he did not realise his posts would be interpreted that way.
Testifying on Wednesday on day three of a suit brought by a group of Twitter stockholders accusing him of attempting to manipulate the market with the aim of reducing its valuation — and therefore the price he would have to pay — Musk said “people read too much into his posts.”
The Tesla CEO said messages he posted to social media after reaching a deal to buy Twitter in 2022 were “extremely literal” and not an attempt to reduce the transaction price.
One of his posts said the acquisition was “on hold.”
But Musk stated that he didn’t expect Twitter’s share price to fall because of it, saying that his tweets were simply what was in his head at any given moment.
“What I think privately is what I say publicly, there’s no difference,” he said.
“If this was a trial on whether I’ve made stupid tweets, I’d say I’m guilty,” Musk said at another point in his testimony.
He said he didn’t expect Twitter’s share price to fall because of the posts.
“I didn’t think there was anything material that would happen if I said I was still committed to the deal,” he added.
He said that at the time he was very unhappy with the board of Twitter because he believed they had purposely misrepresented the popularity and traffic on the app and therefore the true worth of the business.
The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified damages, they say Musk owes them for allegedly making misleading statements, including announcing in July 2022 that he was pulling out of the deal, which caused them to make specific decisions regarding their shares.
Brian Belgrave, who is leading the class-action of individual investors, told the court on Monday that he sold 15,000 Twitter shares at $33 each, a significant loss, on the basis of Musk’s public posts and comments.
He said the price per share he received was much lower than the $54.20 price Musk paid when the deal went through after Twitter threatened legal action to force him to honor his original $44 billion offer.
“I got screwed. I got cheated,” Belgrave told the court.
Claiming Twitter was awash with fake accounts, or bots, in the months leading up to the transaction, which completed in October 2022, Musk had announced the deal was off.
“Mr. Musk didn’t break the law. He wanted to know the truth about bots on Twitter,” his lawyer, Michael Lifrak, told the court during opening statements on Monday.
Counsel for the plaintiffs alleged Monday that it was a calculated attempt to improve the offer he had made for the company in April in his favor, or get out of it altogether.
“He wanted a different deal, where he paid investors less money for their company, So he mounted a public spectacle to trash the company, to drive the stock price down, to renegotiate or escape the deal,” said lawyer Aaron Arnzen.
This week in Washington
President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable on the Ratepayer Protection Pledge inside the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building near the White House on Wednesday. Technology firms that sign the pledge will commit to ensuring artificial intelligence infrastructure does not raise utility bills for households and small businesses. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
