WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – Testifying for a second day, CEO Elon Musk pushed back again Tuesday against a lawsuit that blames him for engineering Tesla’s 2016 acquisition of a financially precarious company called SolarCity that was marred by conflicts of interest and never generated the profits Musk insisted it would.
And for a second day, a pugnacious Musk sparred with Randall Baron, the plaintiffs’ attorney who has been grilling him about his role in orchestrating the SolarCity deal.
“Your questions,” the billionaire CEO complained from the witness stand, “are so deceptive.”
Witness and lawyer clashed down to the meaning of the word “cabal,” which Baron invoked to characterize the Tesla team that was updating Musk daily in July 2016 in the progress toward a SolarCity deal. When Musk objected that “cabal” sounded sinister, Baron countered that it typically meant a group of people working together toward a common purpose.
“Usually not in a good way,” Musk said.