sounds like the SEC is having a talk with all involved, Musk and the Board to see if "Funding secured" was just a tweet to hurt short sellers (and illegal stock manipulation) or it was the real thing. It sort of seems like everyone is now going through the motions to find a way to go private just so it won't seem like the former.
Anyway, who knows what will happen, but it's been fascinating to watch. If you search for "$TSLA" on twitter, you find quite alot of ridiculous, but interesting nonetheless, discussions with people convinced Musk is a scam artist and those who think he's basically Jesus.
https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=tsla
I don't think Musk is a scammer, based on what I know now, but I think he's proven, at best, to be childishly naive regarding his fiduciary duties and accepted processes and norms for vetting and disclosing material information publicly.
At this point it doesn't matter whether he goes forward with taking the company private. He originally said he had
"secured funding," but subsequent blog posts he's made (probably in a panic) reveal that what he was actually referring to in no way even approximates what a reasonable person would consider
secured funding to mean.
If he is unable to convince the SEC that he wasn't trying to scare the shorts out of the stock, then things won't go well for him. His original statement still stands, and the SEC is now asking questions. Shorts are entitled to the same regulatory protections that longs are entitled to.
In my unqualified opinion, he will not be forced out of his position at Tesla over this, but he has certainly drawn regulatory scrutiny that I doubt he intended to do, and that won't go away any time soon; regardless of what he does going forward.
If the SEC investigation turns up anything more substantial than what we know already, things could go south quickly, and his tenure at Tesla could well be at risk. I wouldn't expect the stock to respond well in that scenario.
His board of directors has already requested he stop tweeting about anything at all. He has not tweeted anything yet, presumably as a result of that request.
Just shut the hell up already, is probably the least bad of all his other bad options at this point.
He has certainly dug a pothole on his road to the future that is only there because of him, and which shouldn't be there at all. Whether it stays a pothole, or becomes a sinkhole, remains to be seen. Musk is probably already looking back fondly on the days when all he had to rant against were stock analysts and short sellers.
Now Musk has the SEC and pending lawsuits to deal with, in addition to analysts and short sellers. And what did he gain from his original tweet? A three day pop in the stock price hardly seems worth it. Many of those buyers were probably the shorts who covered, and who are suing right now as a result of covering based on that patently misleading tweet.