The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a proposed order for settlement involving Elon Musk's revocable trust. Under the terms, Musk's trust would be "permanently restrained and enjoined from violating" Section 13(d) of the Securities Exchange Act and ordered to pay a $1.5 million fine to the SEC.
Court filings indicate that the trust neither admitted nor denied the SEC's allegations. According to The Wall Street Journal, Musk's lawyer, Alex Spiro, stated that regulators had "only fined the trust while dismissing the claims against Musk personally." Spiro further commented, "Mr. Musk has now been cleared of all issues related to the late filing of forms in the Twitter acquisition, as we said from the outset he would be. A trust vehicle has agreed to a small fine for being late on one filing."
Notably, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan had rejected Musk’s motion to dismiss this case in February 2026. Judge Sooknanan stated that Musk did not dispute the complaint adequately alleged he disregarded Section 13(d)'s disclosure requirements. Instead, he challenged the constitutionality of these requirements, arguing they burdened his First Amendment rights, were unconstitutionally vague, were selectively enforced by the SEC, and that SEC Commissioners enjoyed unconstitutional protection from removal. The judge concluded that a straightforward application of the law did not support dismissing the lawsuit based on these arguments.
In a separate legal matter concerning Musk's acquisition of Twitter, a federal jury found him liable for making false statements about the number of bot and spam accounts on the platform. Musk made these claims while attempting to withdraw from his deal to purchase the social network. The class action lawsuit alleged that shareholders sold their stock at artificially low prices due to Musk’s false statements.
Reuters reported after the March 20 verdict that "Damages have yet to be calculated but Francis Bottini, a lawyer for the shareholders, estimated they could total about $2.5 billion."