Musk Moves for Mistrial in Twitter Fraud Case

Elon Musk's legal team has filed a motion for mistrial in the ongoing Twitter securities fraud class action lawsuit, citing the plaintiffs' lawyers and the judge as creating an environment where Musk cannot get a fair trial. The motion was submitted on March 7 and explicitly cites the animosity in the community towards Mr. Musk apparent during jury selection.

The motion comes just days after Musk took the stand in the Pampena v. Musk trial, where shareholders accuse him of deliberately tanking Twitter's stock price through misleading tweets about bot accounts before completing his $44 billion acquisition in 2022. This is not a motion to dismiss the case outright, but rather a motion for a mistrial - meaning Musk's lawyers are asking the court to throw out the current trial and start over with a new jury.

Musk's legal team at Quinn Emanuel, led by Alex Spiro, lists five separate grounds for mistrial in the filing. The first ground is that the plaintiffs' lawyers repeatedly violated the judge's own pretrial ruling, which explicitly barred any argument suggesting Musk violated securities laws when he secretly accumulated over 9% of Twitter stock before disclosing his position to the SEC in early 2022.

Despite this ruling, the filing alleges that plaintiffs' counsel brought up Musk's SEC disclosure failures in opening statements and then repeatedly questioned witnesses about it, including asking Twitter's former Chief Legal Officer, Vijaya Gadde, to explain what SEC Schedule 13G forms are and whether Musk filed them on time. This conduct raises concerns about the fairness of the trial.

The defense claims the court interfered with Musk's ability to rebut claims about European privacy laws, allowing plaintiffs to make assertions repeatedly while preventing the defense from challenging them. The judge's actions during the examinations of Twitter's former CFO Ned Segal and former CEO Parag Agrawal also came under scrutiny, with the defense alleging that Judge Breyer exceeded his supervisory role.

The motion accuses plaintiffs' counsel of deliberately asking questions designed to trigger attorney-client privilege objections, making Musk look like he was hiding something from the jury. The filing's most notable argument is arguably its most candid, highlighting the significant animosity towards Musk in the community and how it has impacted the trial.

Nearly 40 prospective jurors were dismissed during jury selection for admitting they could not set aside their biases, a striking number that reflects how Musk's public profile has shifted since 2022. The defense argues that this context makes any prejudicial conduct during trial more damaging than it would be in a neutral venue.

The Pampena v. Musk case was filed in October 2022 on behalf of Twitter shareholders who sold stock between May 13 and October 4, 2022. The central allegation is that Musk made false public statements, particularly his May 13, 2022 tweet declaring the Twitter deal was 'temporarily on hold' and subsequent tweets claiming up to 20% of Twitter accounts might be bots, in order to drive down Twitter's stock price for his own benefit.

Musk has maintained throughout the trial that he genuinely believed Twitter's bot numbers were far higher than the company claimed and that the deal merited renegotiation. The case is separate from the SEC's own action against Musk over his delayed disclosure of his Twitter stock purchases, which seeks more than $150 million in disgorgement and penalties.

The trial is scheduled to continue through March 19, and Judge Breyer has not yet ruled on the mistrial motion. While a mistrial motion is a standard tactical move, the underlying dynamic described in this filing is real - Musk's public profile has become so polarizing that finding an unbiased jury was always going to be a monumental challenge.