Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, will go on trial on Tuesday for allegedly manipulating the stock market with a tweet after a federal judge denied his request to shift the case out of California.
The issue stems back to August 2018, when Musk tweeted that he had enough financing to take Tesla private, prompting a surge in the company’s share price.
Musk was quickly sued by shareholders for allegedly costing them billions of dollars with the tweet claiming finance was “secured” to buy out the company’s stockholders.
According to a spokesperson for the court, Judge Edward Chen on Friday refused to transfer the proceedings to Texas, the southern state where Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters and jury selection is scheduled to begin on Tuesday.
Defense lawyers had argued that the multibillionaire would be denied a fair trial in San Francisco, where he bought Twitter in late October and has been widely criticized for his decisions since taking over the social media firm.
After taking over Twitter, Musk fired more than half of the 7,500 employees, most in San Francisco, and radically changed the site’s content moderation policies.
“For the last several months, the local media have saturated this district with biased and negative stories about Mr. Musk that have fostered… highly prejudicial biases in the jury pool,” the CEO’s lawyers argued in a filing.
“The local media, in a deviation from how they typically cover these stories, have blamed Mr. Musk personally for the reductions and even accused him of violating the law,” the lawyers said.
According to Bloomberg, throughout the hearing, Judge Chen expressed confidence that impartial jurors could be selected.
Musk’s brief post in 2018 already drew the attention of authorities.
The Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States has ordered Musk to resign as Tesla’s chairman of the board and pay a $20 million punishment.