SEC Fires Back at Elon Musk Over Unvetted Tesla Tweets

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fired back at Elon Musk’s assertion of his constitutional right to free speech in his defense to the regulator’s claims that a pair of tweets he sent last month about Tesla Inc. violated restrictions on his social-media posts.

In a court filing Monday supporting a request that a judge hold Musk in contempt of court, the SEC said that Tesla’s chief executive “voluntarily waived” his First Amendment rights when the judge last year ordered him to “obtain pre-approval of written communications that contain or reasonably could contain material information” about Tesla.

To contact the reporter on this story: Peter Blumberg in San Francisco at pblumberg1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wollman at ewollman@bloomberg.net

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