Elon Musk seeks to end US restrictions on his tweets

Elon Musk has asked a federal judge to terminate his 2018 agreement with the top US securities regulator requiring some of his tweets to be vetted by a lawyer.

Musk also asked the judge to block a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) subpoena requesting records of pre-approval of a Twitter poll he conducted in November on potentially selling some of his stock.

In early November, Musk posted on Twitter that he would offload 10% of his Tesla stake if users approved.

A majority did, and the poll sent Tesla shares into a slump. Musk has since sold $16.4bn of stock.

The tweet renewed questions about whether Musk complied with his SEC agreement to obtain approval from a Tesla lawyer before issuing written communications about information material to his company or its shareholders.

The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In reality, a buyout was not close.