Elon Musk Misled Twitter Investors Ahead of His $44 Billion Takeover in 2022, Jury Finds

Mar 21, 2026 4:52am PT Elon Musk Misled Twitter Investors Ahead of His $44 Billion Takeover in 2022, Jury Finds Lawyers for tech mega-billionaire say they plan to appeal verdict By Todd Spangler Plus Icon Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor xpangler Latest Nexstar-Tegna Deal: Eight States File Emergency Motion to Halt ‘Disastrous’ Merger of Local TV Broadcasters 15 hours ago ABC Scrambles to Delete ‘Bachelorette’ Season 22 Promo Content Amid Taylor Frankie Paul Fallout 23 hours ago Nexstar Claims Its $6.2 Billion Deal for Tegna Has Closed Following DOJ and FCC Approvals — After Eight States, DirecTV Sued to Block It 2 days ago See All Elon Musk artificially drove down the price of Twitter ‘s stock in 2022 with tweets claiming the social-media company had underreported how many fake and spam accounts were on its platform, a federal jury found. The verdict was handed down Friday in a civil trial in California against Musk brought on behalf of Twitter shareholders, who alleged that Musk was attempting to back out of his agreement to buy Twitter or negotiate a lower price. The jury found that Musk’s tweets in 2022 — saying he was suspending his takeover of Twitter (citing his skepticism about Twitter’s claims that spam and bot accounts were less than 5% of the total) — were materially false or misleading. However, the jury also found that Musk was not liable for “engaging in a scheme to defraud investors.” Related Stories Hulu Orders Comedy Pilot 'Lex,' About a Reality Star Who Accidentally Films a Murder, From 'Severance' Producer Sean Clements