March 4, 2026, 7:18 p.m. ET Elon Musk took the stand in a shareholder trial on Wednesday in San Francisco, where he’s accused of making false and misleading statements that drove down Twitter’s stock price before he bought the social media platform for $44 billion in 2022. The lawsuit was filed in October 2022 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of Twitter shareholders who sold the stock between May 13 and Oct. 4, 2022, a few weeks before Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized. It claims Musk violated federal securities laws by making false, public statements that “were carefully calculated to drive down the price of Twitter stock.” The billionaire Tesla CEO reached a deal to buy Twitter and take it private in April 2022. On May 13, however, he declared his plan “temporarily on hold” and said he needs to pinpoint the number of spam and fake accounts on the platform. The shareholder lawsuit claims Elon Musk violated federal securities laws by making false, public statements that “were carefully calculated to drive down the price of Twitter stock.” Getty Images Twitter’s stock tumbled as a result. A few days later, he tweeted that the deal “cannot go forward” and claimed that almost 20% of Twitter accounts were “fake,” according to the lawsuit. The plaintiff’s lawyer, Aaron P. Arnzen, began with questioning Musk about his tweets — or lack of tweets — about his decision to buy Twitter and his purchases of Twitter stock prior to deciding to take the company private. Explore More