Pressures continue to surround eccentric billionaire Elon Musk under scrutiny over third party accusations on behalf of a SpaceX flight attendant’s friend. Twitter shareholders are suing Musk, claiming he intended to drive down the stock price. Lets take a look and see what we can see.
Elon Musk
Billionaire, business magnate and investor, earned his first massive sum from his startup that later formed into Paypal, which was subsequently sold to EBAY for $1.5 billion. This earned Elon $175.8 million. He was noted to have purchased x.com back from Paypal for an undisclosed sum of money. If you go to x.com now there is just a blank white page with a singular x on it in the upper left hand corner. He is also CEO and Chief Engineer at SpaceX, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla. Founder of Neuralink, open AI and the Boring Company. He is now the richest man in the world according to Forbes and Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
He likes to flaunt this notion in opposition to other billionaires like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos seemingly teasing them on twitter frequently enough to get a rise. Commenting on a Gates tweet with a pregnant man emoji and on Bezos tweet with a number 2 emoji, denoting he is second and not the richest man in the world.
Sometimes his teenage locker room humor and vernacular are endearing but other times it comes across as petty and fickle. Making purchases that end in 420 or 69 or even pricing his cars in that methodology. Programming fart noises into the Tesla or opening the charging port when you tell it to “open butthole” is all harmless, but not everything he does is.
Brief Overview of the Scandal
As you are all probably well aware, Musk was accused in an article by Business Insider of exposing himself to a SpaceX flight attendant in 2016 in an alleged signed declaration from a friend. The flight attendant said he offered to buy her a horse to finish, after showing his erect penis. After two years of feeling she is being retaliated against, the flight attendant received a $250,000 severance package according to Business Insider. Business Insider says he refused to comment beyond saying there is “a lot more to this story.” and that he needed more time.
He later tweeted, seemingly gleeful.
Finally, we get to use Elongate as scandal name. It’s kinda perfect. 🤣 https://t.co/qSNH7lsn72
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 20, 2022
It seems SpaceX refused to comment on the allegations with the point of contact vice president of legal Christopher Cardaci saying, “I’m not going to comment on any settlement agreements.” These are all third party allegations from the friend of the alleged victim, but it’s awfully specific and detailed. That being said this still comes across as hearsay at the end of the day.
The NDA allegedly signed to obtain the severance is nullified by the “Stand Against Non-Disclosure Act,” which doesn’t allow the use of NDAs in settlements involving sexual harrassment, assault or discrimination unless requested by the plaintiff in California. This is the only accusation of sexual misconduct against Musk at this time, but the lawyers of the victim urge others to come forward.
Twitter Mad
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 19, 2022
Wednesday, Twitter Shareholders filed a lawsuit in the U.S District Court in the Northern district of California claiming his goal was to drive down stock prices of twitter. The lawsuit is claiming he engaged in market manipulation by not disclosing his 9% stake in the company in the correct way to the SEC, using a form that was meant for passive investors. In the process he denigrated Twitter hoping to devalue the company and renegotiate the $44 billion offer to purchase the company.
The lawsuit also claims that “By delaying his disclosure of stake in Twitter, Musk engaged in market manipulation and bought Twitter stock at an artificially low price”.
Musk claims the reason for wanting to back out of the agreement is because of the amount of bots on the platform and without evidence he doesn’t want the deal anymore.
If it was a market manipulation tactic it seems to have worked because Twitter’s stock is hovering around $40 a share, which is $14.20 below what Musk was offering for the platform.
(SEC) Securities and Exchange Commission Confirms investigating Musk
According to an article in the Washington post along with this letter, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000000000022003713/filename1.pdf, Musk delayed filing his status to active investor to scoop up more stock by 11 days, misleading the Twitter board and the SEC. This supposedly saved Musk $156 million according to securities experts, because the board and other investors didn’t know he was purchasing the stock. Spam bots probably aren’t going to save Elon on this, but it’s likely he will just receive a fine according to experts.
Twitter, Musk and Horses Oh, My!
It all kind of makes you wonder what is smoke and what is mirrors when we start looking at this compilation of cluster #@ck. Is it three things coming together perfectly as Elon Musk sophomorically toys with and taunts the SEC and Twitter? If he is engaging with market manipulation and doing it purposely that is really scary, because an individual with that much power should wield it with greater responsibility.
Even worse would be if he is engaging in these lude behaviors with women that are trying to do their job that does not include sex work in the job description. The impression that it gives me is that billionaires can get away with whatever they want and who is going to stop them? The SEC, or the sexual harrassment lawyers in a he said, she said case? Even if something like that goes to court and even if he did offer up a horse, there is no way to prove it without witnesses.
Best wishes,
Chris Coul