Tesla stock stumbles after Musk gets in more trouble over tweets

Elon Musk at an event in California
(Image credit: Robyn Beck-Pool/Getty Images)

Tesla shares fell sharply overnight and early Tuesday, CNBC reports, after the Securities and Exchange Commission asked a judge to hold Tesla CEO Elon Musk in contempt for allegedly violating a 2018 agreement to get prior approval before tweeting about the company's operations. Tesla shares fell nearly 3 percent in pre-market trading Tuesday, after dropping 5 percent after-hours on Monday.

Musk tweeted on Feb. 19 that the electric-car maker would make "around" 500,000 vehicles this year, then clarified hours later that he "meant to say" Tesla would reach the higher production rate by late 2019, while 2019 deliveries would still be 400,000. The SEC said Musk failed to get approval before "publishing this tweet, which was inaccurate and disseminated to over 24 million people." Tesla said Musk didn't need approval because the information was already public.

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.