In the fraud case against Elon Musk for misleading tweets about electric car maker Tesla, the company boss has dismissed all allegations against him as "scandalous".
Musk assured the court in San Francisco on Monday that he never wanted to deceive investors.
With his controversial tweets, he expressed his personal beliefs at the time – and didn't want to cheat anyone.
In August 2018, Musk announced on Twitter that he wanted to take Tesla private at a price of $420 per share.
The funding for this is "secured".
The announcement caused Tesla shares to fluctuate, but Musk later backed down.
It became clear that funding was anything but secure.
Investors complain about "artificial manipulation"
Investors subsequently sued Musk.
They accuse the second richest person in the world of lying and "artificially manipulating" the price of Tesla shares with the aim of harming all investors who had bet on a falling share price.
Regarding the allegations, Musk said in court that he had not written that the secured funding was "a fact".
He only expressed his personal thoughts.
And he was convinced that the financing had been secured.
The tweets about Tesla also got Musk into trouble with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
As part of an agreement, he had to give up the chairmanship of the Tesla board of directors, pay a fine of $20 million and have tweets about Tesla approved by a lawyer.
The current trial comes at a bad time for Musk.
Tesla stock has plummeted in value over the past few months.
Critics accuse the feisty entrepreneur of focusing too much on the short message service Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion at the end of October, while neglecting Tesla.