Musk's motives are debated as Twitter shareholder trial nears end A federal jury in San Francisco is deliberating whether Elon Musk defrauded former Twitter shareholders by publicly questioning the company’s bot problem in 2022, which allegedly drove down its stock price. The trial, which began on March 2, centers on whether Musk’s statements about the platform’s fake accounts constituted securities fraud. Lawyers for the plaintiffs argue that Musk’s repeated claims about the scale of bots—saying the percentage could be 20% or more—were designed to pressure Twitter’s executives and undermine investor confidence. Mark Molumphy, the lawyer representing the shareholders, told the jury that Musk’s actions were deliberate. He cited three instances where Musk publicly raised concerns about the number of bots on Twitter, claiming the figure could be four or five times higher than the 5% disclosed by the company. Molumphy argued that Musk knew Twitter had understated the bot count by April 2022, when he signed the merger agreement to acquire the company for $44 billion. “He trashed the company. Trashed the executives. And tanked the stock,” Molumphy said during his closing argument. Musk’s defense, led by attorney Michael Lifrak, countered that the billionaire had genuine concerns about the bot problem and was focused on assessing its severity, not on manipulating the stock price. Lifrak dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims, stating that two tweets and a podcast did not constitute securities fraud. He emphasized that the plaintiffs had not provided evidence of intentional deception, only speculation that Musk’s silence would have prevented the stock decline. “The only thing the plaintiffs have told you is that if Mr. Musk hadn’t said anything, the stock wouldn’t have gone down,” Lifrak said. “But they didn’t prove fraud.#san_francisco #elon_musk #mark_molumphy #michael_lifrak #twitter
