SEC once again subpoenas Tesla over Musk’s go-private tweet

In a quarterly regulatory filing released on Monday, Tesla stated that the company has been served with a fresh subpoena by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on June 13 regarding quote “our governance processes around compliance with the SEC settlement.”

The settlement resulted from Musk’s 2018 tweet claiming to have financing secured to take Tesla private. The SEC claimed that Musk lacked the capital necessary to take Tesla private despite conversations with Saudi investors. Musk agreed to pay the fine and to submit all tweets containing information that would be important to investors for approval before he sent them out as part of the settlement.

The SEC is looking at Musk’s tweets about trying to purchase Twitter in addition to its inquiry into his role at Tesla. According to a regulatory filing, the agency questioned Musk in a letter on June 2 about his tweets regarding the buyout plan, including ones in which he mentioned the deal being put on hold.

Musk was unhappy with this settlement and claimed it felt like someone pointed a gun at his child’s head. In retaliation, Musk’s lawyers filed complaints against the judge overseeing the case since it supposedly violates his first amendment rights and that the ruling was designed to stop him from talking because he is a critic of the government.

The company now anticipates spending $6 billion to $8 billion on capital projects this year and in each of the next two years. In the past, Tesla predicted spending between $5 billion and $7 billion to expand its factories and other assets.

Musk stated to a Tesla owners club at the end of May that the business was having trouble increasing the output of Model Y sport utility cars at its recently opened factories in Austin, Texas, and Berlin. The automaker outperformed expectations for second-quarter profits last week, and the CEO’s confidence in overcoming supply-chain issues caused shares to rocket to their highest level since early May.