Details of the investigation were revealed in the
SEC’s response to a motion from a Musk attorney
asking a Manhattan federal judge to nullify a
subpoena and throw out the 2018 agreement,
including a requirement that Musk’s tweets be
pre-approved by a company attorney.
Musk attorney Alex Spiro also contended that
the SEC has used the court agreement “to
trample on Mr. Musk’s First Amendment rights
and to impose prior restraints on his speech.”
The commission maintains that the subpoenas
were lawful, and that Musk isn’t following proper
legal procedure to challenge them. SEC attorney
Melissa Armstrong called Musk’s challenge
“frivolous,” and pointed out that Musk and Tesla
agreed to have his tweets pre-approved by
other company officials.
“Courts have long recognized that ‘congress has
vested the SEC with broad authority to conduct
investigations into possible violations of federal
securities laws and to demand production
of evidence relevant to such investigations,’”
Armstrong wrote.
The subpoenas, issued under seal, come from
a formal order by the commission authorizing
the investigation. They seek all written
communications concerning the Nov. 6 tweets
and whether they were shown to Tesla lawyers
for pre-approval.
Tesla did not object to its subpoena and is
producing documents, Armstrong wrote. But
Musk’s lawyer told the SEC that he would not
produce any documents about pre-approval of
his tweets, her response said.
Shortly after the November tweets about the
stock sale Musk began selling off shares, and