Elon Musk has asked a US federal judge to move a shareholder lawsuit trial out of San Francisco to Texas, claiming that negative media coverage has biased potential jurors against him.
Instead, Musk’s lawyers argue in a late Friday filing that the trial should be moved to the federal court in the western district of Texas, less than two weeks before it was scheduled to begin on Jan. 17. This district includes Austin, the state capital, where Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, will relocate in late 2021.
If a move is not possible, Musk’s lawyers want the trial delayed until the negative publicity surrounding Musk’s purchase of Twitter has subsided.
“The local media has saturated this district with biased and negative stories about Mr. Musk for the last several months,” attorney Alex Spiro wrote in a court filing. According to Spiro, those items have personally blamed Musk for recent layoffs at Twitter and have charged that the job cuts may have violated laws.
The shareholder lawsuit stems from Musk’s tweets in August 2018, when he stated that he had enough financing to take Tesla private at $420 per share, causing significant volatility in Tesla’s share price. The attorneys for the shareholders did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last spring, Judge Edward Chen ruled in favor of the shareholders, ruling that Musk’s tweets were false and reckless.
According to his attorneys’ filing, Twitter has laid off approximately 1,000 people in the San Francisco area since he purchased the company in late October.
“A substantial portion of the jury pool… is likely to hold a personal and material bias against Mr. Musk as a result of recent layoffs at one of his companies,” the filing stated.
According to the filing, Musk has also been chastised by San Francisco’s mayor and other local officials for the job cuts.
Liberal Media Trying to Destroy Elon Musk
The political left and mainstream media are outraged that Elon Musk has taken a significant stake in Twitter and are attempting to destroy him, according to conservative radio host Mark Levin.
According to Levin, Musk is a rare member of the corporate elite who appears to be anti-censorship and anti-woke, making him a target for the press. The host stated that if Musk is able to truly restore Twitter’s status as a free-speech platform, he will personally return to it.
“Twitter didn’t ban me; I banned them,” he said on “The Mark Levin Show on Westwood One,” noting that he suspended his own account in January 2021 “in protest of Twitter’s fascism.”
“I hope [Musk] can have a significant positive impact there,” Levin added.
Levin claimed that several media outlets used Musk’s purchase of 9% of Twitter stock to attack him and demonstrate hypocrisy in what they held against him in comparison to other executives who politically aligned with their bias.
“So CNBC covers it this way: ‘Elon Musk Thumbs His Nose at the SEC Again with Twitter Stake,'” he said, referring to one headline.
“[The media] have a long history of attempting to destroy him – he’s another guy like Donald Trump who comes in as his own man – his own independent thinker, whether you agree with everything or not,” Levin added.
Musk Comes to Aide of Ukraine
The host credited Elon Musk with personally intervening to help Ukrainians under attack by the Kremlin, citing the satellite communication technology he provided to the besieged country.
“He set up a parallel system,” Levin said, adding that Musk likely enraged critics further by tweeting that free speech is a fundamental tenet of democracy.
“This man should be saluted – this man should be celebrated,” he continued, adding that Musk is wealthy enough to enter high society: “He could be the fifth-generation Rockefeller.”
“But, as you can see, he broke the 10-day rule,” the host said, mocking CNBC’s reporting.
Levin went on to say that while President Biden continues to push for a transition from fossil fuels to green energy powered vehicles, Musk has been excluded from White House meetings with automakers.
He noted that this has occurred despite the fact that Musk’s Tesla is currently the most visible electric vehicle manufacturer. He claims that Biden politicized such meetings and likely froze Musk out because Tesla does not have unionization.
“Of course, when it comes to electric vehicles, Biden does not invite him to the meetings; instead, he invites GM, Ford, and others, because Elon Musk is a non-union worker. We can’t have that, of course “He stated.
Musk Outs New York Times Over Twitter Censorship
https://www.vornews.com/news/twitter-outs-new-york-times/
