Judge forces Elon Musk to release full list of X shareholders

Crypto commentator and Easy Money author Jacob Silverman has convinced a US district judge to order Elon Musk to reveal the shareholders of X (formerly Twitter). The journalist intervened as a non-party in an unrelated California legal dispute involving Musk’s last-minute maneuvers in taking the platform private.

Silverman explained his reasoning succinctly: “People should know who owns an important site for public discourse and whether its free-speech fundamentalist majority shareholder is doing business with censorious dictatorships.”

According to the judge, Silverman prevailed in his request for public disclosure because he filed a timely request — “not enough delay to deny intervention under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(b)” — and did not prejudice nor re-litigate any issues that would have denied his intervention request.

Instead, he permissively placed a valid legal burden on respondents that was “not onerous.”

According to the judge, the list of Twitter shareholders “does not contain any scandalous information or trade secrets” and may be revealed for “public interest in understanding the judicial process.”

United States District Judge Susan Illston ruled that by September 4, X “​​shall file an unredacted version of the supplemental corporate disclosure statement on the public docket.” For the first time, the world will know the names of all major equity owners of the company when Musk acquired it.

Read more: X has been a crypto scam-filled failure for Elon Musk — now what?

Jacob Silverman wants the world to know who’s really behind X

Silverman has written critically about Musk’s chaotic weeks of acquisition negotiations with Jack Dorsey and his board of directors. In Silverman’s view, Musk bought Twitter to empower Republicans and techno-capitalists who felt victimized by changing social norms.

Indeed, Musk is a staunch Trump supporter and aligned with many right-wing views such as offense at gender pronouns. He also called the Democratic Party “the party of division and hate.” Despite Musk’s public claims of enhancing free speech on X, Silverman believes that he actually just wants to influence political outcomes.

Following that logic, Silverman is curious about foreign interests who might have owned equity in Twitter and persuaded or compensated Musk in his going-private bids. Silverman intervened in at least two lawsuits seeking disclosure of the names on Twitter’s cap table, and he has won his bid for at least one.

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