Let's just call this a spinoff of Joe Biden's Lawfare & Disorder. Maybe we can call this version L&D: Special Targets Unit.

How seriously can we take this lawsuit from the SEC against Elon Musk after the multi-billionaire's full-throated support for Donald Trump? Musk's attorneys will take it seriously for as long as it lasts, which will likely be ... oh, a week or so:

The SEC filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk on Tuesday, alleging the billionaire committed securities fraud in 2022 by failing to disclose he had amassed an active stake in Twitter, a secrecy that allowed him to buy shares at “artificially low prices.”

Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, purchased Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 and changed the name to X the following year. Prior to the acquisition, he’d built up a position in the company of greater than 5%, which would’ve required disclosing his holdings to the public within 10 calendar days of reaching that threshold.

According to the SEC’s civil complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., Musk was more than 10 days late in reporting that material information, “allowing him to underpay by at least $150 million for shares he purchased after his financial beneficial ownership report was due.” Investors may have bid up the stock had they known about Musk’s purchases and interest in the company.

Ahem. It took the SEC more than two years to make this determination? The issue of Musk's stock acquisition came to light even before the purchase took place. In fact, that issue emerged almost three years ago now, well before when Musk alleged that Twitter had withheld critical data on spambots to inflate its share price. In April 2022, a group of Twitter shareholders sued Musk over the late-disclosure issue, giving the SEC plenty of time to delve into the issue even before the sale got completed in October. A week or so later, the board decided to accept Musk's offer anyway and take the profit for its shareholders.

So why did it take the SEC until the week before a new administration takes office to file this lawsuit?

That's hardly the only litigation involved in this deal, either. Musk filed complaints with the SEC in August 2022 that claimed that Twitter's board had deliberately defrauded him and other investors over that issue and others, complaints which went nowhere. Earlier, 
Musk had actually attempted to exit the deal in the spring of 2022 over these issues. The reason Musk owns Twitter now is because Twitter's board at the time sued Musk to complete the deal the previous month on the basis of the original negotiated purchase price. 

Not only did the shareholders' elected representatives want to deal with Musk after this alleged violation took place, they sued Musk to force him to buy their shares at his offer price. And Musk did, although he later alleged that the board defrauded him, particularly about undisclosed severance packages for execs as well as the spambot issue. The SEC did nothing with that complaint, apparently, unless they are using the same three-year window of action in play at the moment. 

The timing of this stinks, especially in its proximity to the election that Musk's support helped Trump win and the current administration lose. Just a few weeks afterward, Musk revealed that he got a "pay up or else" note from the SEC that presaged the lawsuit:

The SEC had been investigating whether Musk, or anyone else working with him, committed securities fraud in 2022 around the Twitter disclosures. Musk said in a post on X last month that the SEC issued a “settlement demand,” pressuring him to agree to a deal, including a fine within 48 hours or “face charges on numerous counts” regarding the purchase of shares.

Again, what was so difficult about this case that it took more than 30 months to investigate? If the disclosure was faulty, that should have been easily reconciled within a couple of months. This looks like payback from butthurt bureaucrats who know they will have to exit their offices in the next few days, a last gasp at revenge for a political opponent. 

One has to expect that the lawsuit has less staying power than Joe Biden's influence in the Beltway. It might take a few weeks as Trump's appointees take over the regulatory bodies of the executive branch, but this lawsuit will almost certainly disappear quietly after that. The only way it may remain in public focus is when the House and Senate start subpoenaing records from these agencies to determine the extent of weaponization of Biden's government over the last four years, and how far it went to punish Trump and his allies.