‘Extreme Enemy of Free Speech’: Tesla Critic Says Elon Musk Bullied Him Off Twitter in 2018 By Calling His Employer and Threatening to Sue

“I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” Elon Musk tweeted on April 25, 2022 after the company’s board accepted his offer to buy the platform for $44 billion.

But on July 23, 2018, he was singing – or in this case, ringing – a different tune.

Lawrence Fossi was working as a portfolio manager in Manhattan at the time. That Monday would have been an otherwise unremarkable day at the office, but for a phone call from an irate – and litigious – Elon Musk.

A colleague relayed the billionaire’s message.

“Elon Musk says that you’re a very bad person and you’re writing bad things about him,” Fossi recalled the colleague explaining. “He’s going to have to sue you and he’s going to have to drag our boss into it.”

Fossi was incredulous, but quickly realized this was no office prank. The CEO of Tesla Motors had actually called his office and threatened to make his life miserable by threatening litigation.

His offense?

He criticized Musk online.

“It was hard to believe,” Fossi told Mediaite by phone last week. “But in fact, that’s what had happened.”

Beginning in 2015, he wrote dozens of articles critical of Tesla on the popular crowd-sourced finance site Seeking Alpha.

“I would take a close look at its financial statements and write about things that struck me as wrong,” he explained.

Writing under a nom de plume, Montana Skeptic, Fossi dissected company filings and provided wonkish analyses to make the bear case against Tesla, which did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

He penned dozens of missives, but some stand out more than others.

Fossi wrote he believed Tesla overstated its profits and papered over losses in its statements. He also wondered if Tesla was hoodwinking Nevada in its deal with the state to make its electric vehicle batteries there. Another time, he questioned Tesla’s claims about the safety of its vehicles. In another piece, Fossi declared New York state had gotten a raw deal after investing nearly $1 billion in a factory for Tesla to build solar panels as part of its solar energy business.

Fossi was also active on Twitter using the Montana Skeptic moniker, and tweeted links to his articles as well as other thoughts about Tesla and Musk.

Eventually, one pro-Tesla online sleuth outed him as the man behind the accounts on Twitter and Seeking Alpha. A little more than a week later, Fossi said that’s when Musk rang his employer.

What especially irked him was Musk’s first line of recourse.

“He had never once attempted to contact me to say, ‘I think you got something wrong in your article, factually,’” Fossi said. “He didn’t email me or have anybody from Tesla do that. Whenever I discovered I had made errors, I would always correct them in the article up front in a note that was prominent and make note of my error.”

After the phone call, Fossi told his employer he would stop writing at Seeking Alpha and deactivate his Twitter account. He stated that while Musk had no valid claim, “I’m not going to drag my boss into a lawsuit he shouldn’t have any part of.”

With one weird, but nevertheless heavy-handed phone call, Musk silenced a prominent online critic, who bid readers adieu the next day. Fossi said Musk stopped threatening him after that.

The Fossi episode is worth revisiting in light of Musk’s pending acquisition of Twitter, especially considering he is being hailed by many – particularly conservatives – as a free speech crusader who will stand up to the censorious ways of Big Tech. Musk has been a prolific user of the platform for years, tweeting everything from schoolyard insults to a major announcement in 2018 that he had “funding secured” for a massive deal to take Tesla private at $420 a share. (Musk has an affinity for the number 420 because of its association with marijuana. His now-accepted offer to buy Twitter is $54.20 a share.)

But Fossi, who resumed writing and tweeting about Tesla after leaving his job in 2019, isn’t the only one to draw the proactive ire of Musk for expressing speech he did not like.

When Tesla employee Richard Ortiz tried to unionize the automaker’s workforce at company’s factory in Fremont, California in 2017, Tesla fired him. Later, the National Labor Relations Board ruled his termination illegal and ordered Tesla to reinstate him and furnish back pay.

In June 2018, Business Insider reported Tesla had to scrap or rework 40% of the raw materials at its Gigafactory in Nevada. The publication cited a source who estimated the situation had cost the company at least $150 million. In response, Musk assigned investigators to identify the source, whom they found to be Martin Tripp, an assembly line worker at the facility. The source explained he leaked the damaging information after he raised the issue internally to no avail.

Musk accused Tripp of hacking and sabotage. Tesla sued him for $167 million. That same day, the company’s security department gave a “tip” to police stating that Tripp was planning a mass shooting at the factory. When police found him, “he was unarmed and in tears” and said he was “terrified of Musk.” Police said they found no evidence Tripp was planning to do harm.

Tripp eventually settled with Tesla and agreed to pay $400,000 and admit he stole trade secrets. But the Gigafactory’s security manager at that time filed a whistleblower report with the SEC, maintaining that Musk’s accusations against Tripp were not true.

Less than a month after suing Tripp, Musk thrust himself into the international spotlight as 12 members of a boys soccer team and its coach were trapped in a cave in Thailand. The auto magnate had a small submersible designed and sent to the location to assist with the rescue. Vernon Unsworth, who was involved in the rescue effort, said it was not a viable rescue vehicle, calling it a “PR stunt.” In response, Musk baselessly called him a “pedo guy” on Twitter and a “child rapist” in an email to a reporter Musk called a “fucking asshole.”

Three weeks after lobbing unfounded pedophilia claims at Unsworth, Musk tweeted the aforementioned “funding secured” claim while the market was open, no less. Not surprisingly, the tweet spawned a trading frenzy that goosed Tesla shares substantially higher toward the $420 price, boosting Musk’s net worth in the process. At the time of the tweet, the stock was trading in the high $300s, and so investors piled into the stock hoping to be cashed out at $420 for a nice profit – all based on the claim that funding had been secured for a go-private bid.

Funding was not secured. A month and a half later, Tesla settled fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission after the agency stated that “Musk knew that the potential transaction was uncertain and subject to numerous contingencies.” Tesla and Musk each paid fines, and the billionaire stepped down as chairman of the board. The company also agreed the board will “put in place additional controls and procedures to oversee Musk’s communications,” including his tweets, though the board has yet to rein in the CEO in any way.

“One of the biggest problems with Musk to my mind is that he lies serially,” Fossi said, before breathlessly rattling off a series of products Musk has announced over the years that to this day remain mere vaporware: level 5 full self-driving capability; the second generation Tesla Roadster; the Tesla Semi; the Tesla Cybertruck.

The vehicles received heaps of positive media coverage, only to remain in production limbo years after loyal customers put down deposits to reserve them for when they roll off the assembly line, if ever.

Fossi also provided an update on a case he is working pro bono along with other counsel on behalf of a Tesla critic named Randeep Hothi, who like the others named above, ran afoul of Musk. He’s now suing the CEO for defamation.

Hothi was a fierce Tesla detractor on Twitter. In 2019, the company claimed he “stalked, harassed, and endangered” Tesla employees who were driving and filming a Model 3 on a Bay Area highway ahead of an “autonomy investor day.” Tesla also alleged he trespassed and surveilled the company’s Fremont factory, and that he had struck an employee with his car. The company claimed Hothi “fled the scene.” Tesla sued Hothi, claiming it had surveillance footage of the alleged incident. In order to proceed with its claim, an Alameda County judge ordered Tesla to produce the supposed footage. The carmaker declined and dropped the suit.

Now, Hothi is seeking damages over comments Musk made after the suit was dropped. The CEO stated Hothi “actively harassed” and “almost killed Tesla employees.”

“It was defamatory in our view,” Fossi said. “And so we asked for an apology.”

He said Hothi would have dropped the suit if Musk had stated he “misapprehended the facts.”

Fossi explained their request received no response and that the suit against Musk is currently in the discovery phase of the case.

“He’s a very thin-skinned, narcissistic, egomaniacal human being,” said Fossi, who, though he has plenty of criticisms for Musk, does agree with him on at least one issue.

“I think Twitter overdoes it with its censorship,” said the self-described conservative who used to be a Republican before Donald Trump took over the party. “So, I think some of Musk’s criticisms there are valid.”

At the same time, he has a warning for fellow conservatives and others who believe Musk is the antidote to censorship.

“I view him as an extreme enemy of free speech, and it’s regrettable that the narrative has caught on that he’s somehow a free speech hero,” Fossi said, who noted Tesla’s presence in China, which is the auto manufacturer’s second largest market thanks to its lucrative factory in Shanghai.

“By the way, Twitter’s banned in China,” Fossi points out. “Has Musk said a word about that? No.”

Fossi said he can imagine scenarios in which the Chinese Communist Party attempts to get Musk to censor criticisms of China on Twitter by using Tesla’s presence in the country as leverage.

“What will Musk do?” he asked. “Ask yourself: would Musk controlling Twitter be an improvement? I have a hard time believing it.”