Elon Musk was misleading in his public statements during a crucial period of his 2022 Twitter takeover, a jury has found

After two days of deliberations, a jury in San Francisco federal court decided in a unanimous verdict against the tech titan, who was sued by a group of Twitter investors arguing they had relied on his statements.

While testifying in court earlier this month, Musk argued that he did not mislead investors and that people simply read too much into his public comments and tweets.

The jury instead found that certain of his public claims of problems in Twitter’s user metrics, and that he was possibly backing out of the $44bn acquisition deal, were intentionally misleading.