Elon Musk Is Back at War With the S.E.C.

Musk unveils The Boring Company’s test tunnel in Hawthrone, CA on December 18, 2018.

By Robyn Beck/Getty Images.

Tesla C.E.O. Elon Musk has once again run afoul of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency which he said last year he does “not respect”. On Monday night, the S.E.C. called on a federal judge to hold Musk in contempt of court for disseminating “inaccurate and material information” about his company on Twitter—an alleged violation of his settlement with the agency last year. At issue? A tweet he sent last week in which he claimed Tesla made “0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500k in 2019.”

Musk later amended his tweet, saying he “meant to say annualized production rate at end of 2019 probably around 500k, ie 10k cars/week,” but that “deliveries for year still estimated to be about 400k.” But that didn’t fly with the S.E.C., which argued that he needed prior approval for the tweet under the terms of his settlement, and that the information he broadcast to shareholders, the media, and “anyone with Internet access” was inaccurate. “The S.E.C. respectfully requests that the Court enter an order to show cause why Defendant Elon Musk should not be held in contempt of the Court’s October 16, 2018 Final Judgment,” the agency wrote in its motion Monday.

Tesla shares fell more than 5 percent in after-hours trading Monday as the market absorbed the news. But Musk, whose social-media habit is a perennial headache for Tesla executives and investors, was unrepentant. On Tuesday morning, Musk lashed out at the agency on Twitter, writing that “something is broken with S.E.C. oversight.”

This latest tiff is a sign that the war between the S.E.C. and Musk—who just can’t seem to stop tripping over his own feet on Twitter—shows no sign of abating. Nor are the Tesla owner’s problems limited to the agency. Over the past year, Musk’s more outlandish claims—including that a British diver involved in the rescue of the Thai soccer team trapped in the flooded Tham Luang cave was a “pedo guy”—have led to P.R. nightmares and lawsuits as the company has sought to rein him in. Last week, Tesla general counsel Dane Butswinkas—a.k.a. the guy Tesla hired to review all social-media postings by Tesla officers as part of the S.E.C. settlement—quit after just eight weeks on the job, citing a “poor cultural fit.”

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