Elon Musk accuses a major Saudi investor of ‘ass-covering’ in a trial over his ‘funding secured’ Tesla tweet

Elon Musk accuses a major Saudi investor of ‘ass-covering’ in a trial over his ‘funding secured’ Tesla tweet

Elon Musk said he'd tweeted about planning to take Tesla private in part after assurances by a major Saudi Arabian investor, whom he accused of later "backpedaling" and "ass-covering" to slink out of an alleged agreement. In an ongoing civil trial in San Francisco federal court, Musk his 2018 tweet about having the "funding secured," for a Tesla transaction, saying that Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia's Private Investment Fund, had "verbally" expressed support for the plan. Musk said that in a meeting in July 2018, Al-Rumayyan told him, then-Tesla chief financial officer Deepak Ahuja, and Musk's then chief-of-staff Sam Teller that the Saudi investors "were committed" to a plan they were discussing to take the carmaker private. He said that Al-Rumayyan told them that "they would do whatever it took to get it done," and that he'd been "unequivocal" about supporting the deal. Then in a conversation after Musk's tweet, Al-Rumayyan softened his stance to say that the Saudi PIF were interested in looking into possible investment opportunities with Tesla, Musk said. "At this point, Yasir is obviously backpedaling from what he told me, and Deepak and Sam, that they were committed to the transaction," Musk said in