Having driven Twitter's value down by $15B, I can't imagine Musk won't be sued by shareholders for it, since his claims of fake accounts are as yet unproven. The same goes for the damages this little venture has inflicted on Tesla stock. The SEC and FTC are likely to cost Musk Enterptises a pretty penny in legal fees before all of this ends.

The $1B penalty for backing out of the Twitter deal is the least of Musk's concerns.

it's somewhat hard to argue that musk is responsible for the decline given that the entire NASDAQ is also down. you might be able to find some contribution, but only a relatively small amount of it.

But Musk set the price at $54 by agreeing to buy Twitter at that price. If this deal were guaranteed to go through, shares should be trading at that price until the sale is complete. Trading at above that price means shareholders would lose money at closing, and trading at below means someone is leaving money on the table. Market forces should cause the price to converge at $54.

The fact that it’s trading lower means that investors don’t expect the deal to go through. And who exactly as been doing his best to very publicly bring the deal into question? Elon Musk.

If he was the only thing dragging twitter toward $54, and then he stops dragging it as hard, it's hard for me to see that as driving value down. If he hasn't caused any other damage, that's just twitter returning to its natural value.

Given the agreement, it sure seems to me that Twitter's natural value is currently $44 billion dollars.

Is it down $15B from the post-announcement peak, or from pre-announcement? I’d think only the latter would hold up in court.

Having driven Tesla's value down (below the market decline) by nonstop trolling, …

Sure, let’s pretend the entire market hasn’t sunk.

> Sure, let’s pretend the entire market hasn’t sunk.

Why does that matter? Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion. If he comes through, that's the value of Twitter. If he doesn't, then the value is something else. The difference between $44 billion and fair market value is just the expectation of investors that Musk really will pay. So yeah the drop really _is_ due to Musk trying to back out of the deal. If Musk weren't backing out of the deal, then then Twitter's value shouldn't drop regardless of the fact that the rest of the market has.

Intent is the core issue of most white collar fraud.

I'd say that's because harm (and reliance) is usually easy to prove.

From my understanding, US law is based on King George III, which inherently requires intent to be proven.

In other words, US law judges by intent vs actual action/damage.

One example of this is: Credit Card Fraud is prosecuted based on max possible theft vs money stolen.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/intent

Mens rea is a necessary but not sufficient component of proving a criminal charge - the defendant intended to break the law. Actus reus is also required, which is actually doing the act.

US law doesn't "judge by intent". If you try to murder someone but you don't succeed, you don't get charged with murder.

Yes, I agree with you and I should have worded my comment better.

To keep with the murder example, intent is what separates 3v2, in most states. Yes, a crime was committed but was the intent to cause bodily harm vs actions causing bodily harm, without intent.

There's a contract in place (that waves due diligence!).

If he entered into that contract with no intent to honor it...

As Levine has repeatedly stated he didn’t “waive due diligence”. It was a binding purchase agreement. It’s meant to come after all of the due diligence.

He didn’t waive his right. He just opted not to do any before buying.