Elon Musk says his tweet about taking Tesla private was ‘totally true’

Lawyers for the electric-car maker’s billionaire chief executive said in a court filing Tuesday that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund had in fact agreed to support his attempt to take the company private.

According to a heavily amended filing by attorney Alex Spiro, “Elon Musk’s August 7, 2018 tweet informing the public that he was considering taking Tesla private was completely true.” “Mr. Musk was considering taking Tesla private at $420 a share. Funding was secure. There was investor support.”

The tweet shook shares of the company and led the US Securities and Exchange Commission to prosecute Musk for fraud. Musk and Tesla settled with the agency, agreeing to pay $40 million in fines. Musk resigned as chairman of the company for three years.

Shareholders in a class-action suit pending in federal court in San Francisco claim that Musk’s tweet caused the company’s stock price to skyrocket and caused billions of dollars in damages.

Investors are demanding a judge’s ruling – ahead of a trial set for May 31 – that the tweets were false statements. The hearing is to be held in March.

According to Spiro’s filing, which refers to the acronym of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, “Not only did Mr. Musk firmly believe the funding was secure when he tweeted, in fact (with PIF Mr. As discussed in) it was safe.”

Tesla stock rose 13% after the tech-private tweet hurt short sellers who didn’t cover their positions. Other investors who read Musk’s message as a buy signal continue to run into losses when doubts about his ability to follow through grow and the company’s stock price plummets.

Musk announced he was taking Tesla public a few weeks later via a blog post on Friday night.

Case Tesla Inc. Securities Litigation, 18-CV-04865, US District Court, is at the Northern District of California (San Francisco).

This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.