Elon Musk tweets dumb meme as SEC asks judge to hold him in contempt

2025-04-27 16:02:55admin

Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk couldn't contain himself -- he had to tweet about his electric car company.

The problem? After he reached a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last year over his now infamous "funding secured" tweet, he isn't supposed to tweet about things that could impact markets and his publicly traded company without approval from Tesla.

Tweet may have been deleted

Now Bloomberg reports that the SEC is asking a judge to hold Musk in contempt for tweeting Tesla would make "around 500K" cars in 2019.

SEE ALSO: Tesla launches Amazon store filled with every 40-year-old child's dreams

On the same day of the original tweet, a few hours later, Musk amended his comment, clarifying that he meant 500,000 cars would be made on an "annualized production rate" based on 10,000 cars made per week.

Tweet may have been deleted

The tweets remained on his Twitter feed as of Monday afternoon. In fact, he continues to tweet -- he posted a meme as news broke about the SEC's actions.

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Tweet may have been deleted

The SEC declined to comment beyond a 17-page motion filed Monday.

In the document the SEC said it reached out to Musk and Tesla the day after the Feb. 19 tweet and found out the tweet had not been pre-approved before it went out.

A Tesla lawyer actually helped Musk draft the "meant to say" tweet a few hours later as a "corrective tweet."

Musk apparently thought the Tesla earnings call in January counted as pre-approval for his comments, "because he thought he was simply recapitulating information that had already been pre-approved," the SEC wrote.

The SEC cited Musk's 60 Minutes interview from early December in which he said, "Well I guess we might make some mistakes, who knows" and "I do not respect the SEC."

The SEC also learned through that Musk's tweets are only reviewed after publication, and "there is no suggestion that Musk has sought or obtained pre-approval of any tweet prior to publishing it."

Here's the full motion:

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