Elon Musk probably wishes he was back in Richard Branson’s kitchen, the set of Saturday Night Live, in a deep hole underneath Las Vegas digging a tunnel with a shovel, or anywhere else then where he was on Monday.
The Tesla CEO was being grilled by Randall Baron, an attorney for a group of Tesla shareholders who are suing Musk in a Delaware court.
Musk was defending his company’s acquisition of SolarCity in 2016, which is a solar panel company that was founded by Musk’s cousins.
What the people suing Musk are claiming is the acquisition was a bailout of SolarCity, and claim it cost them money as Tesla shareholders. They filed suit back in 2017, saying in the suit that Musk put heat on the Tesla board to make the $2.6 billion deal to save SolarCity, a company Musk owned 22% of at the time.
As Baron was grilling Musk, the CEO would give long responses to yes or no questions, which angered Baron, who actually accused Musk of holding up the trial.
Musk fired back at Baron, calling some of his questions “really trick and deceptive.”
The best part of the exchange is when Musk told Baron “I think you are a bad human being. You were mentored by criminals, then you continued to be mentored by criminals.” He was referring to the examples of criminality that a former pattern of Baron was caused of.
The other highlight of day one of the two-week trial was hearing Musk talk about his job as CEO of Tesla, and whether he liked it or not. He said he doesn’t, but it would be impossible for him to move on, because he’s tried in the past an it would be “very hard not to be the CEO of Tesla, but I have to or frankly Tesla is going to die.”
Add comment