SEC Closes In on Musk Amid Gensler’s Departure

The SEC and Elon Musk are like oil and water... if oil also liked trolling water on social media. Musk famously told Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes back in 2018, “I want to be clear. I do not respect the SEC. I do not respect them.” That was after the whole “Funding secured” tweet debacle, where he casually floated the idea of taking Tesla private at $420 a share, which was not not a securities violation.

Fast forward to this week: the SEC is back in Musk’s orbit, this time probing his financial acrobatics during the Twitter buyout. The agency is digging into whether Musk’s simultaneous Tesla stock sales and Twitter stake-building crossed into securities fraud territory. Oh, and they’re putting him on a clock, giving Musk a 48-hour ultimatum to settle, which feels more like a drama deadline than a legal one.
Meanwhile, Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro (yeah that guy), is accusing the SEC of harassment, noting this is just the latest chapter in their six-year love-hate relationship. Elon being Elon, he went on X to share a Grok AI-generated caricature of SEC Chairman Gary Gensler as a snail. Edgelord status secured.

The timing is the cherry on top: Gensler is about to step down, and President-elect Trump’s incoming administration is widely expected to dial back regulatory crackdowns on billionaires behaving badly in general, and Elon very much in particular. If the SEC wants to score a win before the tide turns, it needs to do it at more than a snail’s pace.