Elon Musk still wants out of his SEC settlement

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Other than running Tesla, SpaceX, and — perhaps at some point if the buyout is complete — Twitter, Elon Musk is staying busy with yet another appeal in his case against the SEC. His beef with the government agency is, as it has been for the last several years, over the 2018 settlement he agreed to after being charged with securities fraud over a tweet about taking Tesla private. In April, US District Judge Lewis Liman was not swayed by Eminem-related arguments from Elon’s lawyers and ruled to let the agreement stand as originally written.

Now, Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, has filed with the court to take his case to the US Court of Appeals in the hope of a different decision. The world’s richest man has argued that he was coerced into settling with the SEC, that its investigations into Tesla are “like having a gun to your child’s head,” and has argued to the court that the SEC is motivated against him by political bias as it continues to monitor his Twitter activity.

In his decision in April, Judge Liman wrote, “Musk cannot now seek to retract the agreement he knowingly and willingly entered by simply bemoaning that he felt like he had to agree to it at the time but now—once the specter of the litigation is a distant memory and his company has become, in his estimation, all but invincible—wishes that he had not.”

But, now, Musk and his lawyers will try to argue otherwise in a different courtroom.