By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell book
BBC - Honduras - CIA Trial book - NY Mag
SDNY COURTHOUSE, Sept 14 – Trevor Milton's lead lawyer Marc Mukasey, in his opening statement, had scoffed or tried to get the jurors to scoff at the idea of a prosecution based on tweets or a podcast.
But already by Day 2, a podcast came to the fore. Milton had appeared on "Tesla Charts, the Chartcast with TC and Georgia" on July 17, 2020. And he had made claims that were not true, at least as he made them.
Milton said, "all of our hydrogen's produced on the freeways." But it wasn't producing any hydrogen at all. Maybe he'd meant, under our plan, it is this way (hypothetically). But it's not what he said.
Kurt, now being e-mailed by Tesla supporters telling him to stop mentioning the two companies together, took note of a class action complaint filed that day in the Northern District of California alleging that "Year After Year, Tesla Fails to Deliver on Its Promise of a Fully Self-Driving Car, Instead Providing Experimental Software that Kills and Maims Drivers... The California DMV Charges Tesla with Untrue, Misleading, and Deceptive Marketing of its “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” Technology." He might have more on that.
The US v. Milton prosecutors put on the stand Nikola's head of sustainability Elizabeth Fretheim who said she'd fretted about what Trevor said, even went to CEO Mark Russell about it. But Russell had not taken the podcast off Nikola's social media. So was he part of the fraud conspiracy?
Or was hypothetical talk about what a company might do in the future not as outrageous as Fretheim now said? More on Patreon here.
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