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Just days after reaching an agreement to settle fraud charges levied against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk decided it was time to get take a jab at the governmental body that had sought to oust him as Tesla’s CEO and which has ordered him to step down as chairman for three years.
And of course, he did this on Twitter, which is where he made the claim that got him in trouble in the first place.
Just want to that the Shortseller Enrichment Commission is doing incredible work. And the name change is so on point!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2018
“Just want to that the Shortseller Enrichment Commission is doing incredible work. And the name change is so on point!” Musk tweeted out Thursday afternoon.
Thursday’s tweet is especially notable because the SEC had said that as part of Musk’s settlement agreement to stay on the CEO job, “Tesla will establish a new committee of independent directors and put in place additional controls and procedures to oversee Musk’s communications.”
So much for those controls, so far.
In early August, Musk tweeted that he had secured the financing to take Tesla private. That sparked a surge in the company’s stock price. A few weeks later, he canceled his take-private plan. The financing had not been secured after all. The SEC charged him with fraud last week, and he also faces a possible criminal investigation by the Department of Justice.
Musk’s settlement terms also called for he and Tesla to each pay $20 million in fines to the SEC.
When reached for comment about Musk’s possibly inflammatory comment, an SEC spokeswoman said the group “has nothing to say about it.”
Tesla didn’t immediately return a request for comment about Musk’s tweet.
Musk’s tweets came not long after a U.S. District Court judge in New York said she wanted Musk and the SEC to write a joint letter saying why she should accept the terms to settle the SEC’s fraud charges. According to CNN, Judge Alison Nathan gave Musk and the SEC until Oct. 11 to submit the letter, which is to be double-spaced and not exceed 10 pages. In such cases, federal judges do have leeway to determine whether or not to accept the parties settlement terms.