‘How could you do this to me?’: Elon Musk could be fined and face numerous charges over Twitter purchase

Gary Gensler isn’t messing around.

Gensler is the current chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the organization making life a nightmare for Space X CEO Elon Musk. Called the Sheriff of Wall Street, Gensler has drawn flak from corporate executives due to his hardline policies to prevent monetary crime and abuse in the financial sector. He’s gone after everything from hedge funds to cryptocurrency in an effort to root out corruption and create greater market transparency, and now he’s set his sights on Elon Musk’s X.

Elon Musk posted a letter sent from his attorney to Gensler’s agency, responding to the SEC’s demand that Musk must pay an undisclosed (and likely staggering) sum of money concerning his purchase of Twitter in 2022. If he doesn’t pay, he will “face charges on numerous counts.”

“Oh Gary, how could you do this to me?” wrote Musk. Though the X CEO might be resorting to mockery, Gensler will likely have the last laugh.

According to a lawsuit filed by a Twitter investor in 2022, Musk has been accused of violating a regulatory deadline to reveal that he owned over 5% of the company. According to the suit, Musk nearly doubled his holdings to a total of 9%. The lawsuit claims that Musk’s failure to disclose this information financially damaged Twitter investors, who sold their stock in the company two weeks before Musk acknowledged his sizable stake in the platform. Musk’s subsequent disclosure of his Twitter holdings caused company stock to skyrocket in price, but the investors who had sold their shares did not benefit from this price increase, even though the information should have been made public.

This isn’t the first time Musk and the SEC have traded blows. In 2018, the SEC began an investigation of Musk’s electric car company, Tesla. Musk took to Twitter to declare that he had gathered enough money to privatize the company, leading investors to believe he would do so. Musk never made Tesla private, and a court ruled that “he recklessly made the statements with knowledge as to their falsity.” Musk was ordered to pay a $40 million fine. He and his lawyers attempted to appeal the decision with the Supreme Court, but the nation’s highest court rejected the case. The letter Musk posted also claims that the SEC is reopening an investigation into Musk’s brain-chip company Nueralink, but the SEC has neither confirmed nor denied this claim.

Musk and Gensler have also frequently found themselves at odds about cryptocurrency. Gensler led a widespread crackdown against crypto, calling the market a “Wild West” that is “rife with fraud, scams, and abuse in certain applications.” Musk, meanwhile, is a staunch supporter of cryptocurrency, so much so that he even named the Department of Government Efficiency—the government cost-cutting agency he has been slated to lead with Vivek Ramaswamy during Trump’s second term—after an internet meme and cryptocurrency.

Though Gary Gensler is set to give up his position as SEC chair when Donald Trump takes office on January 20, 2025, it’s clear that he’s attempting to clean house this holiday season before his tenure in office ends. Elon Musk is spending the season compiling a “naughty” and “nice” list of government employees, but he appears to be marked down on the SEC’s naughty list himself.