Customary of controversial messages, billionaire Elon Musk launched a double salvo on Thursday, accusing an American regulator of seeking to muzzle his freedom of expression and comparing Justin Trudeau to Hitler.
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A lawyer for electric car maker Tesla said in a letter to a judge on Thursday that the Stock Exchange Constable (SEC) was waging a “campaign of harassment” once morest Mr. Musk, as part of an agreement tied between the two parties.
The SEC had imposed several sanctions following a tweet in which the entrepreneur assured in 2018 that he had the appropriate funding to withdraw Tesla from the stock market, without providing proof.
After an unfortunate new tweet in early 2019, Mr. Musk had agreed that his messages directly related to the activity of Tesla would be pre-approved by a competent lawyer before being published on social networks.
But the SEC has not fulfilled its part of the agreement, delaying paying shareholders the $ 40 million in fines imposed on Mr. Musk and Tesla, the lawyer claims.
On the other hand, it uses this agreement “to try to muzzle and harass Mr. Musk and Tesla”, in particular “because Mr. Musk regularly criticizes the intervention of the public authorities”, he says in his letter.
“The disproportionate efforts of the SEC seem calculated to temper” the right to freedom of expression, it is added.
This missive was made public a few hours following the entrepreneur posted an image on Twitter comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.
SCREENSHOT/TWITTER
The richest man in the world had already supported Canadian drivers leading the protest on the social network.
On Thursday, he was responding to an article reporting that Canadian authorities had asked financial institutions not to facilitate the financial transactions of 34 cryptocurrency accounts that may have supported protesters opposing health restrictions.
The image features a photo of the Nazi leader and the messages ‘stop comparing me to Justin Trudeau’.
The Committee of American Jews reacted on the social network by considering that Mr. Musk had shown “extremely poor discernment in invoking Hitler to make his point of view on social networks”.
“He must apologize immediately,” he added.
Mr Musk’s tweet was later deleted, “removed by author” according to a message inscribed in the place.
