Elon Musk was reportedly cleared by a federal jury’s verdict that his ‘funding secured’ tweet in 2018 didn’t harm Tesla investors

Elon Musk was reportedly cleared by a federal jury’s verdict that his ‘funding secured’ tweet in 2018 didn’t harm Tesla investors

Elon Musk was reportedly vindicated late Friday Friday when a federal jury found that Tesla investors failed to prove that he derailed them with a 2018 tweet that he had to take the electric carmaker private, a deal that never materialized. The nine-person jury arrived at the conclusion shortly after deliberations started, The verdict was the culmination of a civil trial in San Francisco federal court, in which jurors heard testimony from high-profile witnesses , along with Tesla's former chief financial officer Deepak Ahuja, and Musk's former chief of staff Sam Teller. Musk's defense in July 2018 with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, an official in Saudi Arabia's Private Investment Fund, in which he said Al-Rumayyan had committed to helping to finance the deal. Those verbal assurances in part led him to tweet that he had "funding secured" for a take-private deal for Tesla, he told jurors last month. Nicholas Porritt of Levi & Korsinsky LLP, an attorney for Tesla's shareholders, had challenged that narrative. In closing arguments Friday, Porritt told the jury that a conversation over financing, which he estimated could be to the tune of $60 billion, would have had to at least be put in writing, yet Musk took no