Tesla said that this past November, the SEC sought “information on our governance processes around compliance” with a September 2018 settlement between the company and the regulatory agency.
The subpoena was issued 10 days after Musk triggered a stock sell-off when he asked his Twitter followers if he should sell 10% of his stake in Tesla.
Tesla’s stock price dipped by 16% over two days following his tweet.
The SEC forced Musk to step down as chairman and to appoint independent members to the company’s board of directors to censor his tweets. The SEC said Musk had to “establish a new committee of independent directors and put in place additional controls and procedures to oversee [his] communications.”
He also agreed to pay $20 million while Tesla kicked in another $20 million in fines. The SEC said Musk agreed to “establish a new committee of independent directors and put in place additional controls and procedures to oversee [his] communications.”
Musk attorney Alex Spiro claimed 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.”
Elon Musk Twitter deal: investor activist
Then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said last year that his company erred when it censored a New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the weeks leading up to the presidential election.
