Judge rejects Musk bid to overturn Twitter fraud verdict

A federal judge on Monday rejected Elon Musk's attempt to overturn a jury verdict that found him liable for securities fraud related to his 2022 acquisition of Twitter, now known as X. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco clears the way for a multibillion-dollar class-action payout to proceed, while granting Musk a minor concession on one of his challenged social media posts.

The case centered on tweets Musk posted in May 2022, after he had agreed to purchase Twitter for $44 billion. On May 13, he tweeted that the deal was "temporarily on hold" pending details on spam and fake accounts, known as bots. Four days later, he tweeted that the purchase "cannot move forward" until Twitter's CEO proved the bot percentage was under 5%. Investors alleged these statements were deliberately misleading attempts to drive down Twitter's stock price, allowing Musk to renegotiate or back out of the deal, and caused them to sell shares at depressed prices.

A jury in March unanimously found Musk liable for fraud based on those tweets. In his ruling Monday, Judge Breyer denied Musk's motions for a new trial, to decertify the investor class, and for judgment as a matter...