Tesla boss Elon Musk says he can’t get a fair trial in San Francisco

The billionaire, who runs both Tesla and Twitter, suggested the trial be held in west Texas, where Tesla moved its headquarters from northern California to Austin about a year ago, according to a filing by his attorneys late Friday.

A significant portion of the San Francisco-area juror “is likely to have a personal and material bias toward Mr. Musk, as a result of the recent firings at one of his companies, as individual potential jurors — or their friends and relatives — might have been personally affected,” they wrote the lawyers. “The existing baseline distortion has been exacerbated, expanded and reinforced by the negative and inflammatory local publicity surrounding the events.”

Investors suing Tesla and its CEO Musk argue that his August 2018 tweets about privatizing the electric carmaker with “secured funding” were “undeniably false” and cost them billions of dollars by triggering wild swings in Tesla’s stock price had. Musk has claimed that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has agreed to back his attempt to take Tesla private. The trial is scheduled to begin on January 17th.

“To be clear, this motion is not being brought just because Mr. Musk has been the subject of negative media coverage. Mr. Musk has been a public figure for more than a decade and recognizes that being the subject of negative and even unfair media attention is part of territory,” the filing said. “The local media and political establishment have attempted to portray Mr. Musk as personally responsible for causing material economic damage to the significant number of potential jurors affected by the sackings and to the city of San Francisco as a whole.”

Musk has fought with Twitter’s hometown of San Francisco after converting some rooms at the company’s Market Street headquarters into makeshift bedrooms, a possible violation of the city’s building codes. Musk has also criticized London Mayor Breed for the city’s fentanyl crisis.

In late October, he bought Twitter for $44 billion and installed himself as chief executive officer. After Tesla moved its headquarters to Austin in December 2021, the company still has an impressive presence in California. In a blog post this week, the company said it has 47,000 employees in the state.

Musk’s attorneys believe West Texas would offer a fairer venue than Northern California.

“Mr. Musk is far more likely to get a fair trial in the Western District of Texas,” they wrote. “Mr. Musk has not been the subject of overwhelming, pervasive, and inflammatory local media coverage in Texas’ Western District, as he has in that district. Texas news outlets are doing far fewer stories about Mr. Musk.”