Elon Musk's Tesla tweets have been deemed
Elon Musk's Tesla tweets have been deemed "misleading" by a US judge, according to investors
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According to documents filed by investors suing Elon Musk’s electric vehicle firm, a judge characterised a 2018 tweet in which he claimed to have secured the funds to take Tesla private as “false and deceptive.”

Tesla shareholders have charged the company of securities fraud following the August 7, 2018 tweet, which caused the stock price to fluctuate dramatically for many days.

Plaintiffs requested the federal judge overseeing the lawsuit, Edward Chen, to order Musk to stop publicly stating that he “secured” funds to take Tesla private for $420 per share, as he did again on Thursday.

The billionaire entrepreneur previously stated that he was in talks with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund at the time and was sure that a deal would be reached. However, there was never any formal announcement of an agreement.

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According to the petition, Chen recently decided in an order that was not made public that Musk’s assertions were “false and misleading,” and that he made them “recklessly and with full knowledge of the facts that he misrepresented in his tweets.”

Musk is charged by the plaintiffs of engaging in “a high-profile public campaign to portray a contradictory and deceptive narrative regarding his August 7, 2018 tweets,” which could sway jurors assigned to the trial later this year.

In the aftermath of the tweets, the US Securities and Exchange Commission charged him with fraud.

He eventually agreed to a settlement that compelled Tesla’s lawyers to approve any social media posts containing “material” information for shareholders.

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He also resigned as Tesla’s chairman after paying a $20 million punishment.

Musk, who just announced a $43 billion hostile takeover attempt for Twitter, said on Thursday that he felt compelled to reach an agreement with the SEC in order to save Tesla.