Therese Poletti’s Tech Tales
Tesla CEO claims to be the champion of retail investors while being sued by them, says he thought taking Tesla private would be like buying a house, and insists he should still be trusted — will a jury still believe him?
San Francisco has been home in recent days to an upside-down world of contrasts where one of the world’s richest men, Elon Musk, enters a federal courtroom with four security staff in tow to portray himself as an advocate for the average retail investor who has never lost money for his investors.
The Tesla Inc. TSLA chief executive is in San Francisco to defend himself against a shareholder lawsuit stemming from his 2018 “funding secured” tweet, when he claimed to have a go-private deal for the electric-vehicle maker that…