Elon Musk is the billionaire business having large capacity of manufacturing unit for electric vehicle. Recently, in a court filing, the billionaire says the Securities and Exchange Commission has engaged in "outsized efforts" to monitor the firm that "seem calculated to chill his exercise" of free speech.
The letter heightens the battle between Mr Elon Musk and financial regulators over his social media activity.
His Twitter posts often move markets.
In 2018, the SEC ordered Mr Musk to submit to increased oversight of his posts about Tesla as part of a settlement into claims that he misled investors in 2018 with a post about taking the electric car company private.
The SEC has repeatedly raised questions since about Mr Elon Musk running afoul of the agreement, in which Mr Musk agreed to give Tesla officials pre-approval of posts about the company.
In November, regulators subpoenaed the firm, requesting information about its governance processes related to the order.
That month, Mr Musk asked his more than 70 million Twitter followers whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla shares, driving shares lower.
- Tesla sued over alleged racial discriminations.
The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) said it had received "hundreds of complaints" from workers at the Fremont factory.
Tesla called the lawsuit "misguided".
It said it "strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment" and will ask the court to pause the case.
Tesla said this would allow it to "take other steps to ensure that facts and evidence will be heard".
Kevin Kish, director of the DFEH, said the agency "found evidence that Tesla's Fremont factory is a racially segregated workplace where black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay and promotion".
- Musk's brain chip firm denies animal cruelty claim
In the letter to Judge Alison Nathan, who is overseeing the 2018 settlement, the billionaire's attorney Alex Spiro accused regulators of "weaponizing the consent decree by using it to try to muzzle and harass Mr. Musk and Tesla".
"The SEC seems to be targeting Mr. Elon Musk and Tesla for unrelenting investigation largely because Mr. Elon Musk remains an outspoken critic of the government," he wrote on behalf of Mr Elon Musk and Tesla.
"The SEC's outsized efforts seem calculated to chill his exercise of First Amendment rights rather than to enforce generally applicable laws in even-handed fashion".
He said the SEC had opened "serial investigations" without seeking guidance from the court, and that the agency was overdue to distribute to investors the $40m in penalties it collected as part of the 2018 settlement.
'Flouting the law'
The SEC declined to comment.
Mr Elon Musk's Twitter musings on topics from Tesla to cryptocurrency have frequently appeared to move market prices.
He has used his perch to criticize the SEC, saying oversight at the agency was "broken".
Mr Elon Musk has also criticized US President Joe Biden for not acknowledging the contributions of SpaceX or Tesla, most recently dismissing the president as a "damp [sock emoji] puppet".
But Professor James D Cox, who teaches corporate and securities law at Duke University, said the SEC is responding to Mr Elon Musk's decision to repeatedly flout a court order, not his other antics.
Executives at publicly traded companies are bound by protocols governing disclosure of information, he said.
"This isn't a question of the SEC targeting him," he said. "They're doing it because he is brazenly ignoring the order of the SEC that has the imprimatur of the federal court system."
In addition to the financial regulator's subpoena, Tesla faces a racial discrimination lawsuit from the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing and a safety probe from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
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