Elon Musk’s Emails Now Fair Game For JPMorgan Chase in Legal Fight Over Tesla Shares

JPMorgan Chase will get to read some of Elon Musk’s SpaceX emails after a federal judge on Wednesday gave the billionaire Twitter owner four weeks to turn over the documents as he battles the Wall Street bank in court, Reuters reported.

The nation’s largest bank sued Musk’s electric vehicle company Tesla in 2021 in a Manhattan federal court, alleging that Tesla had breached a 2014 contract involving stock warrants that Tesla sold to the bank. JPMorgan alleges that the billionaire Tesla CEO used his SpaceX email account to communicate about taking publicly-traded Tesla private, an idea he floated in a 2018 tweet that said “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.”

The post sent Tesla’s share price up and forced JPMorgan to reprice the warrants, which give the holder the right to buy a company's stock at a set "strike" price and date. Tesla shares have since soared 10-fold. The bank alleged it had not received any payouts and is owed $162 million.

Tesla and JPMorgan didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Court papers on the order for Musk to turn over the emails aren’t yet available on Pacer; Reuters, which attended the hearing, quoted Tesla lawyer Nathan Goralnik as saying JPMorgan plans to depose Musk in December.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Musk with fraud in September 2018 over that tweet and other similar ones. Musk and Tesla each paid $20 million fines and Musk stepped down as board chairman.

The high-profile legal case is an unusual showdown between the bank and Musk, one of JPMorgan’s richest clients. After the financial institution sued Tesla, Musk told The Wall Street Journal, “If JPM doesn’t withdraw their lawsuit, I will give them a one star review on Yelp. This is my final warning!”