Move to silence Elon Musk launched by group of Tesla shareholders suing CEO over his tweets about taking company private

TESLA shareholders have launched a legal effort to silence the electric car company’s CEO Elon Musk.

The group has asked federal judge to bar Musk from commenting on a lawsuit they have filed against him, according to a recent court filing.

GettyA group of Tesla shareholders are asking a federal judge to block the company’s CEO Elon Musk from commenting about a lawsuit they have filed against him[/caption]

APMusk is being sued in federal court over tweets he sent in 2018 about the possibility of taking the company private[/caption]

In the previously filed federal lawsuit, the shareholders claim they lost money after Musk posted a series of tweets in 2018 saying he was thinking about taking Tesla private.

The new restraining order filed by the shareholders on Friday comes after recent public comments Musk made about the tweets.

Lawyers for stockholders of the Austin, Texas-based company also say in court documents that the judge in the case has ruled that Musk’s tweets about having “funding secured” to take Tesla private were false, and that his comments also violate a 2018 court settlement with U.S. securities regulators in which Musk and Tesla each agreed to pay $20 million fines.

Musk, during an interview Thursday at the TED 2022 conference, said he had the funding to take Tesla private in 2018.

He called the Securities and Exchange Commission a profane name and said he only settled because bankers told him they would stop providing capital if he didn’t, and Tesla would go bankrupt.

“The SEC knew that funding was secured but they pursued an active, public investigation nonetheless at the time,” Musk said during the April 14 TED Conference, according to CNBC.

“Tesla was in a precarious financial situation. And I was told by the banks that if I did not agree to settle with the SEC that they would, the banks would cease providing working capital and Tesla would go bankrupt immediately,” he continued.

In the 2018 tweets, Musk said he had the financial backing to buy the company’s shares at $420 each.

At the time, the social media revelation triggered a rocky few weeks for the publicly traded company’s stock prices.

According to the lawsuit, Musk knew at the time that he was tweeting inaccurate information.

The case is currently set to head to trial in May.