Elon Musk on Tuesday compared himself to rapper Eminem for throwing away his 2018 deal with the top US security regulator to force Tesla’s chief executive to get pre-approval for his tweets.
In a filing in federal court in Manhattan, Mask also renewed his efforts to cancel a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission subpoena for details on whether he and Tesla complied with their disclosure requirements under the 2018 consent decree.
The SEC is investigating Musk’s tweet on November 6, 2021, asking his followers if he should sell 10 percent of his Tesla shares to cover tax bills on stock options. Since then, he has sold about $ 16.4 billion (approximately Rs. 1,24,150 crore) of his shares in the electric car company.
In Tuesday’s filing, Musk said Tesla’s lawyers had an unconstitutional pre-ban on his speech for examining some of his tweets, in violation of the First Amendment.
“(SEC) won’t let me stay or let me stay so let me see; they tried to stop me,” says Musk, Eminem’s 2002 song “Without Me.”
Eminem’s song has been cited by the Federal Communications Commission, which fined radio stations for playing “The Real Slim Shady”, an Eminem song whose content was deemed offensive.
Musk further said that the SEC had issued its subpoena in bad faith and could not continue the “fishing campaign” to harass him.
The SEC declined to comment.
It said Musk was not immune from an investigation into his Tesla-related tweets and should not be excused from the 2018 deal because he felt the consent was “less convenient than he expected”.
The deal stemmed from Musk’s tweet on August 7, 2018, that he had “secured funds” to take Tesla personally. On Tuesday, Musk said the tweet was true.
The case is being heard by U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan. He won US Senate approval last week to become a federal appeals judge and could continue to preside over his existing cases.
The case is SEC v. Mask, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 18-08865.
Thomson Reuters 2022