If he lied when they were setting up the poison pill, Twitter'd probably win the inevitable court case, and he'd get in trouble for misrepresenting his position.
Sure he did. The law recognizes his indirect control as possibility and all the SEC forms specify when they ask how much he controls they're including via those mechanisms.
I mean, if he owned some Google stock, and Google decided to buy 1% of Twitter, that would probably be different, because Elon wouldn't own enough of Google to make them do anything or even be aware of their investments. But if Tesla did, or he bought index funds that included Twitter, then yes.
I understand, thanks. Just wanted to be sure: did he have to necessarily fill out these forms before he said "I control x% of Twitter", or could it be that he didn't have to fill them out, and in practice didn't fill them out?