Elon Musk faces US fraud trial over Tesla tweet

• Elon Musk will stand trial on Tuesday for allegedly manipulating the stock market.
• A federal judge denied his request to move the case out of California.
• Jury selection is set to begin on Tuesday in Texas, where Tesla’s headquarters are located.

SAN FRANCISCO: Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, will stand trial on Tuesday for allegedly manipulating the stock market with a tweet after a federal judge denied his request to shift the case out of California.

The dispute dates back to August 2018, when Musk tweeted that he had enough cash to take Tesla private, prompting the company’s share price to skyrocket.

Musk was quickly sued by shareholders for allegedly costing them billions of dollars with the tweet claiming finance had been “secured” to buy out the company’s stockholders.

According to a court spokeswoman, Judge Edward Chen rejected on Friday the request to transfer the proceedings to Texas, the southern state where Musk relocated Tesla’s headquarters, and jury selection is set to begin on Tuesday.

Defence lawyers argued that the multibillionaire would be denied a fair trial in San Francisco, where he purchased Twitter in late October and has been harshly chastised for his activities since taking over the social media company.

Musk fired more than half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, most of whom were based in San Francisco, and drastically altered the site’s content control procedures.

“For the last several months, the local media have saturated this district with biased and negative stories about Mr. Musk that have fostered… highly prejudicial biases in the jury pool,” the CEO’s lawyers stated in a document.

“The local media, in a deviation from how they typically cover these stories, have blamed Mr. Musk personally for the reductions and even accused him of violating the law,” the lawyers said.

According to Bloomberg, throughout the hearing, Judge Chen expressed confidence that impartial jurors could be found.

Musk’s brief tweet in 2018 already drew the attention of authorities.

The Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States has ordered Musk to resign as Tesla’s chairman of the board and pay a $20 million fine.

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