The trial of US billionaire Elon Musk began, yesterday, Tuesday, in San Francisco, with the selection of the members of the jury who will have to decide whether the head of “Tesla” and “Twitter” wrote a fraudulent tweet in 2018, as investors accuse him.
The case dates back to August 2018, when Musk tweeted that he wanted to take Tesla off the stock exchange, because he had enough funding to do so, which caused the company's share price to swing sharply for a few days.
Am considering taking Tesla private at $420.
Funding secured.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018
"Prosecutors allege that these tweets were factually false, and artificially affected the share price of Tesla and other stocks," Judge Edward Chen told prospective jurors.
Last Friday, the judge refused to transfer the procedures to the state of Texas, where the American billionaire moved the headquarters of Tesla.
Musk's lawyers argued that he could not enjoy an impartial trial in San Francisco, California.
In an earlier decision related to this case, the judge ruled that the famous 2018 tweet could be considered "false and misleading".
The tweets of the head of Tesla have also previously caused disagreements between him and the authorities.
The Securities and Exchange Commission had filed a complaint following that tweet, believing that Musk had not provided evidence of having the necessary financing.
At that time, the authority forced him to relinquish the chairmanship of Tesla's board of directors, pay a fine of $ 20 million, and later demanded the prior approval of his tweets related to Tesla's activity from a specialized lawyer.
The American billionaire tried to overturn this decision, but to no avail.
It should be noted that Musk bought the Twitter platform in late October, and was widely criticized for his decisions, ranging from the platform's content management policy to the mass layoffs of employees.