Why does the SEC want to sanction Elon Musk regarding his Twitter takeover?
The SEC wants the court to make clear that Elon Musk’s “gamesmanship and delay tactics must cease” in its investigation into his takeover of Twitter.
September 10 was a big day for SpaceX as the Polaris Dawn mission, the first of three that are part of a privately funded space program. It was finally going to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida after being delayed by the weather. Elon Musk didn’t want to miss the event that would lead to the first all-civilian spacewalk two days later.
However, he had a previous date with investigators from the Securities and Exchange Commission enquiring about details of his 2022 acquisition of Twitter. They are trying to find out if the tech billionaire violated securities laws when he started accumulating stock in the social media platform that he has now renamed X.
Why does the SEC want to sanction Elon Musk regarding his Twitter takeover?
This wasn’t the first time Musk has skipped out on an interview with SEC investigators on the matter. In September 2023, he failed to appear “in defiance of a lawful administrative subpoena” which led to a court order in May this year that he appear for a deposition SEC attorney said Robin Andrews in the Friday filing.
To add insult to injury, the billionaire canceled the scheduled interview just three hours before it was set to take place in Los Angeles, California and the SEC had “spent thousands of dollars to fly three attorneys” to the City of Angels.
Musk’s lawyer claims that his failure to attend resulted from an “emergency” outside of his control. Furthermore, his attorney Alex Spiro wrote “there is no reason to believe such an emergency will reoccur,” in his own filing.
However, the SEC says that the owner of SpaceX’s excuse “smacks of gamesmanship.” Two days before the launch, the private space company had already announced it was targeting the Tuesday morning launch. “As the company’s Chief Technical Officer, Musk surely was already aware by then that SpaceX was targeting the morning of his SEC testimony for the launch,” the commission’s filing states.
“Despite this advance knowledge, Musk did not notify the SEC of his intent to attend the launch until three hours before his testimony was to begin,” the accusation continued. Now that he has bailed on two interviews the SEC says “the court must make clear that Musk’s gamesmanship and delay tactics must cease.”
While they have rescheduled the interview for October 3, the SEC argues that sanctions must be placed on Musk as there is nothing to deter him from not showing up yet again.