Elizabeth Warren drills Tesla board over Musk’s Twitter moves, legal conflicts

While Twitter users who participated in a straw poll overwhelmingly support Elon Musk stepping down as CEO, it may be too late for Musk’s golden goose, Tesla. On Sunday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sent a letter to the chair of Tesla’s board raising questions about possible legal failures by Musk and the board since Musk’s takeover of Twitter.

Warren brought up potential conflicts of interest and misappropriation of Tesla resources in the letter to Chair Robyn Denholm. According to Warren, possible conflicts of interest revolve around how Twitter may structure advertising deals with Tesla and its automaker competitors. As for misappropriation, Warren notes that Musk reportedly diverted Tesla engineers to help with Twitter.

Warren said it is the board’s responsibility to ensure Musk “does not treat the company as a private plaything,” and said, “it appears that the board has taken no action to protect the company, and Tesla’s stock price has plunged.”

Tesla’s stock is down more than 60% year to date, worse than every other major tech stock aside from Meta. Warren is asking Tesla’s board to detail exactly what actions they are taking to monitor possible conflicts by Jan. 3.

Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022

Tesla’s share price initially popped Monday after Musk’s poll revealed Twitter users favored him resigning as “Chief Twit.” Nearly 58% voted yes to him stepping down, a result Musk has promised to abide by, despite noting he doesn’t have a successor as of Sunday night. More than 17 million users voted in the poll over the 12 hours it was available.

It has always been Musk’s plan to eventually appoint someone to run Twitter, but since his October purchase he’s acted as CEO to the detriment of Tesla.

Tech analyst Dan Ives said Monday morning in a note it was “time to end this nightmare as CEO of Twitter,” declaring that Musk has been using Tesla stock “as his own personal ATM machine since this saga began in April.”

He said Musk deciding to step down at Twitter would be a major step forward for Tesla. Tesla is currently valued at around $477 billion as of Monday, nearly 11 times what Musk paid to purchase Twitter.