The "if they can nail him" seems like a big if to me.
If it is a scheme and he had no intention of ever actually buying twitter, the government would still have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it for this fraudulent reason. Or at least collect enough evidence to make him accept a plea deal for fear he could lose in court.
It would seem to me that him backing out now has a bunch of other very plausible explanations beyond "it was fraud all along", including the one this document states, that twitter breached their agreement by not providing the data he wanted to assess the prevalence of fake account himself. Or even that buying some "media company" is just what billionaires do[1], but him being "eccentric" he went in too hard and fast and is now backing out that he has seen the backslash and/or has done some actual due diligence, which would make him stupid and/or irresponsible but not criminal. All that to me seems like good ways for lawyers to claim there is "reasonable doubt" should he ever get charged with fraud, unless the government would happen to find some "smoking gun" piece of evidence.
And of course it assumes there is actually political will to nail him.
I think they’ve clearly shown that’s not true ever since they tried to take him back to court for clearly not having his tweets pre approved, despite the settlement over the “funding secured” tweet.
The man literally tweeted “Tesla stock is too high right now, imo” and nothing happened.
The tweeting came after signing binding agreements. You may disagree that the tweets or buying a business are the same level of seriousness, but the binding part of binding agreement is the rule of law part of society that makes all businesses work.
Musk not being reigned in by the SEC, when looked at in a vacuum is probably not the end of the world or the US economy, but it’s not in a vacuum. Everyone watching right now realizes that you can publicly enter into fraudulent business deals that you leave at convenience and there is nothing you can do about it unless you have have better lawyers. That is gonna be super degrading towards the ease of doing business
I read something that the Sec wants to nail him, but it's also afraid of losing a Supreme court case (a la the epa) that would totally gut its regulatory power. The entire idea of the Sec relies on the idea of the administrative state being constitutional, if they push too hard, our unfriendly reactionary supreme court might snap them, saying congress didn't explicitly say they could nail Musk for x, y, and z, even if all the other pillars of intent are proved.
the man has plot armor, he can do what he likes knowing that the Department of Defense is counting on him and his launch platform for the next generation of space warfare [0] - any efforts to reel him in will be met with a phone call like Alexander Acosta, "above your pay grade", "leave it alone"
[0] you didn't think Starlink's purpose is to let fisherman watch YouTube did you?
