Elon Musk listens as US President Donald Trump speaks during the House Republican Conference meeting at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill on November 13, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Allison Robert | Getty Images
The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a “settlement request” to Elon Musk, the tech billionaire revealed in a social media post Thursday.
The post contained a copy of a letter sent by Musk's lawyer, Quinn Emanuel Partner Alex Spiro, to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
The letter said the federal agency had pressured Musk to agree to a settlement including fines within 48 hours, or “front costs on several counts” regarding “the Purchase, Sale and Disclosure of certain Twitter shares”.
The SEC has been investigating whether Musk, or anyone else working with him, committed securities fraud in 2022 as the Tesla The CEO sold shares in his car company Tesla and increased his interest in Twitter, before buying the social network now known as X.
“Oh Gary, how could you do this to me? ” Musk said in the post he shared on X late Thursday, along with an emoji showing a face holding back tears and a copy of Spiro's letter.
In another post on Thursday, Musk wrote that he, “Asked @Grok to draw a picture of @GaryGensler. Pretty flattering, I think!” That post featured an AI-generated image depicting the SEC chair as a snail-like creature wearing a suit.
A person familiar with the probe, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the case, told CNBC that the SEC sent Musk a settlement offer in recent days, but received more than 48 time to answer. .
If the SEC can't reach a settlement agreement with Musk, this person said, charges may not be the next step. When the agency can't reach a settlement agreement with defendants, it sometimes issues what's called a Wells Notice before enforcement officials make recommendations to agency commissioners, who then decide whether to to file charges or not.
Gensler, Musk and Spiro did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.
Musk's lawyer argued in his letter that the SEC has subjected Musk to “more than six years of harassment” through investigative activities, including by reopening an investigation into the billionaire's health technology venture Neuralink this week.
Spiro also wrote that he was personally subpoenaed by SEC staff but refused to comply. He accused the agency of an “improperly motivated campaign against Mr. Musk and the individuals and companies associated with him,” and demanded that the White House or the SEC has directed this case against his client.
In 2018, the SEC accused Musk with securities fraud after he tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share and that he had “proven funds” to do so. A private lease agreement never materialized.
Musk and Tesla each paid a $20 million fine to the group, and struck a revised settlement agreement that forced Musk to temporarily step down as chairman of Tesla's board. Since then, Musk has been expressing his disdain for the SEC again.
The head of Tesla, SpaceX and X has also been a Republican mega-donor in recent years, and helped return President-elect Donald Trump to the White House.
In July of this year, Trump promised to fire the chairman of the SEC. After Trump's election victory, Gensler announced that he would resign instead.
In a unique way civil litigation In regards to the Twitter deal, which is the focus of a recent SEC investigation, the Oklahoma Firefighters Pension and Retirement System sued Musk accusing him of concealing his advanced investments in the social network, and that he intended to buy the company.
The pension fund's lawyers argued that Musk, by clearly failing to disclose his investments and intentions to buy Twitter, had influenced the decisions of other shareholders and put them under a -opportunity.
Watch: Elon Musk is asking the court to prevent OpenAI from turning a profit
