Elon Musk testifies in second day of Tesla tweet trial

Elon Musk returned to federal court on Monday in San Francisco to testify in a class action lawsuit filed by Tesla investors alleging he misled them with a tweet. The tweet, which resulted in a $40 million settlement with securities regulators, claimed he had lined up the financing to take Tesla private in a deal that never came close to happening.

The trial hinges on the question of whether a pair of tweets that Musk posted on August 7, 2018, damaged Tesla shareholders during a 10-day period leading up to a Musk admission that the buyout he had envisioned wasn’t going to happen.

Musk, who said he “had trouble sleeping last night and unfortunately I am not at my best”, testified that it was important for jurors to know that he “felt that funding was secured” due to his ownership of “SpaceX stock alone.”

“Just as I sold stock in Tesla to buy Twitter. … I didn’t want to sell Tesla stock but I did sell Tesla stock,” he said of the stock sale to make up for the lack of funding from other sources for his USD 44 billion deal to take Twitter private.

“My SpaceX shares alone would have meant that funding was secured,” Musk said.

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