From my understanding, there's literally no way to get out of the $1B penalty even if he proves everything that he claims about Twitter bots. What he's trying to get out of right now, is buying Twitter at the price he originally said.

Is he even capable of selling just because he wants to buy something?

Insiders have to have a stock acquisition/disposition window and follow that schedule to only sell during that pre-determined schedule

I don't really understand this theory/criticism, can you elaborate? note, its not about whether he did, its about whether its important since all insiders have windows and schedules they can and can't sell in

in this criticism, did he sell outside of that window? and is that compliant?

if it was within the window, then... who cares?

The theory is that buying twitter provided him a good "excuse" to dump a ton of TSLA. If he had just randomly sold billions of TSLA it would have spooked the markets because it would seem like Elon didn't believe in the future of the company, or at the very least didn't believe that it's current valuation is justified.

an you mean that its not really about the liquidity of the markets, its more about the perception of why the sell (of an amount that large) occurred at all, and extrapolating what that means

okay

He sold $8.5B in stock over 3 days and within 2 days of the sales filed Form 4’s (changes in beneficial ownership) as required by the SEC.

If you have SEC filings showing these sales were scheduled in advance show please link them.

It would be a legal issue if they weren’t scheduled

So proving that they werent is More important than proving that they were

It sounds like a diabolical idea, but why would someone risk that much money on something that is pretty much guaranteed to get tied up in long-term and very public litigation?

There's no way to simply back out of a very public offer for a major social app without litigation that costs time out of your life (which is in that case more of a painful thing than losing the money). Paying capital gains (after huge deductions of course) might prove to be less by the time it's all done.

Because Musk thinks he’s a god, he can distort the reality around him and do whatever he wants with no consequences.

And TBH, he has all the reasons to think so. He’s been openly lying about so many aspects of his businesses for a long time, manipulating markets, ignoring all the rules and regulations and only thing it resulted in, was making him wealthiest man in the world.

I'd never give bad behavior a pass, but I think moral points are superfluous to the discussion, and they only serve to show emotional bias, they don't really serve the right method of evaluating the overall situation.

Expressing character traits and flaws puts a harmful spin on discussions. Think of the situation as if an unknown person did the very same things perhaps?

The actual actions taken and specific words written and recorded are the only things that will be considered most by a court ultimately (if correct process is followed).

This thread is not court and the question posed was "why would Musk do it". And the answer seems spot on - he lied and bullied for years and it tended to end for his benefit. There was no reason for him to not think it is going to end the same way.

And it is not even primary issue with Musk, it is primary issue with general economy/justice syatem that favors lying and bullying, pri ided you have enough money.

> There's no way to simply back out of a very public offer for a major social app without litigation that costs time out of your life

$1B is a lot of money…he has obviously determined it’s well worth it to spend a few million in legal fees to try. Even if they settle (which more than >90% of cases do) maybe he cuts that penalty in half…even if he knocks 10% of financially it’s well worth it. Even if he loses and ends up paying his legal fees and their legal fees its clear he has determined it’s well worth it.

He’s not on the hook for $1 billion. That was just a break up fee if he couldn’t secure financing. He’s on the hook for the entire deal value.

Ding ding ding

Musk is (was?) not selling Tesla stock. It would be very hard to sell $8.5B of stock without completely crashing its value. He was taking out a loan secured against that stock.

According to this regulatory filing with the SEC, and others, he did, as I said a smoke screen to distract from the fact he most certainly did crash the stock as you suggest. A total sale of about $8.5B, but the total Twitter purchase price was $44B and that difference is where you are likely getting the idea of the loan against his remaining stock.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001494730/000089924...

It's a matter of public record that MUSK ELON REEVE sold precisely $8,517,410,779 worth of Tesla stock between April 26th and April 28th [1].

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/insider-transactions?p=...