Featured Image Credit: Win McNamee / Staff via Getty
Elon Musk has been involved in his fair share of legal challenges, yet his most recent visit to court saw an admission of guilt that few could have predicted amid accusations that he manipulated Twitter's stock valuation during the ongoing takeover.
It has been nearly four years now since Elon Musk completed a $44 billion deal to purchase social media juggernaut Twitter, now rebranded to X, although that certainly didn't come without a myriad of issues along the way.
Musk, an incredibly active user on the platform for over a decade prior to his purchase, initially initiated an unsolicited and non-binding offer for the company in April 2022, which the existing management saw as a hostile takeover attempt.
This was finally accepted later in the same month despite efforts from Twitter's leadership to resist Musk's influence, although issues began to arise in May as the billionaire revealed that he'd put the deal 'on hold' after discovering information about the number of bot accounts on the platform.
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Musk repeatedly shared posts – many allegedly disparaging towards Twitter – including a 'poop emoji' to former CEO Parag Agrawal's admission that external investigation into the platform's userbase was 'impractical', and Musk then formally announced his intention to terminate the proposed acquisition in July.
Twitter launched a lawsuit against Musk with the goal of completing the lawsuit, and in early October his legal team informed the social media company that the deal would now be going ahead again at the originally-agreed price of $54.20 per share.
While Twitter's leadership walked away with a significant amount of money following the sale – which many, including Musk himself, agree was an 'overpay' – one group that was inadvertently hurt by proceedings was the investors themselves, who have now sued Musk alleging that his tweets negatively impacted the company's stock value.
As reported by the BBC, some investors believed that they were 'cheated' or 'screwed' by Musk's comments amid the ongoing takeover, as they sold their shares at a far lower price than both when they were purchased and what Musk's takeover eventually settled on, allegedly as a consequence of the eventual owner's tweets.
While investors have to prove that Musk intentionally manipulated Twitter's stock price through his social media posts, the world's richest man has made some strange comments on the witness stand — including admitting that he's guilty for one particular thing.
Musk declared that his posts were "extremely literal" and that he was "simply speaking my mind," when asked why he shared the things he did at the time, adding that "people tend to read too much into things that I do [...] What I think privately is what I say publicly, there's no difference."
He then offered his own assessment of the legal case itself, declaring that "if this was a trial on whether I've made stupid tweets, I'd say I'm guilty."
There's something we can certainly all agree on, regardless of where you stand on the man himself.
