In the latest explosive chapter of his long-running war with federal regulators, billionaire Elon Musk has moved to dismiss a high-stakes lawsuit from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, painting the agency’s action not as a legitimate enforcement effort, but as a politically motivated attack on one of its most prominent critics.
The legal battle centers on Musk’s blockbuster acquisition of Twitter in 2022.
The SEC alleges that by waiting 11 days past a critical legal deadline to disclose his initial 5 percent stake, Musk was able to secretly amass more than 500 million dollars of additional Twitter stock at “artificially low prices,” profiting at the expense of unsuspecting investors.
An innocent mistake or a calculated ploy?
In a motion filed in a Washington, DC federal court on Thursday, Musk’s lawyers paint a picture not of a calculated market manipulator, but of an investor who made an innocent and immediately-corrected filing error.
They argue that Musk stopped purchasing additional shares and filed his disclosure just one business day after his wealth manager consulted counsel about the potential requirements.
They went further, accusing the agency of a politically motivated attack, stating the action “reveals an agency targeting an individual for his protected criticism of government overreach.”
The motion emphasizes the lack of malicious intent, a key pillar of their defense.
The lawyers for the Tesla and SpaceX CEO wrote:
The SEC does not allege that Mr. Musk acted intentionally, deliberately, willfully, or even recklessly… Rather, the SEC alleges that Mr. Musk late-filed a single beneficial ownership form three years ago, and fully corrected any alleged error immediately upon its discovery. There is no ongoing violation.
The long shadow of a bitter feud
This confrontation is not happening in a vacuum; it is the culmination of years of animosity between the mercurial billionaire and the powerful regulator.
The feud famously ignited in 2018 after the SEC sued Musk over his Twitter posts about possibly taking Tesla private and having “funding secured,” a battle that has continued to simmer ever since.
The timing of this latest lawsuit has only added fuel to the fire.
The SEC sued Musk on January 14, just six days before Republican President Donald Trump took office and appointed Musk as a special adviser, a role in which he is tasked with slashing the very federal workforce and spending that the SEC represents.
The SEC, which did not respond to a request for comment, is seeking to force Musk to pay a civil fine and give up the profits it alleges were a direct result of the delayed filing.
Now, with the battle lines drawn and a formal motion to dismiss on the table, the stage is set for the next major legal showdown in one of Silicon Valley’s most enduring rivalries.
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