Acting Head of SEC Was Only Commissioner Who Didn’t Vote to Sue Elon Musk

Just before Donald Trump took office in January, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reportedly held a vote on whether the agency would sue Elon Musk for alleged violations of securities law related to his purchase of Twitter. According to Reuters, four commissioners—three Democrats and one Republican—voted to move forward with legal action against Musk. The lone “no” vote came from Mark Uyeda. He’s now the acting head of the agency.

At issue with the Musk case was his failure to share the fact that he had acquired more than 5% of shares in Twitter while it was still public, a threshold that requires public disclosure within 10 calendar days. Musk held onto the information for the full 10 days and then at least 10 more days, according to an SEC complaint, which allegedly allowed him to underpay for the shares by at least $150 million. Once Musk did finally make public that he owned more than 5% of the company, Twitter’s share price climbed 27%.

The SEC has been investigating that, along with other shady activity surrounding Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, since 2022. On January 14, 2025, the commissioners put it to a vote to determine if the agency would pursue legal action based on the findings of its investigation. Republican Commissioner Hester Peirce took issue with how much the SEC wanted to fine Musk, according to Reuters, but voted for the lawsuit anyway.

But Uyeda took a different route. According to a report from Bloomberg, he started lobbying SEC staffers to sign a pledge declaring that the case against Musk was not motivated by politics. Insisting that a case is not political is not a thing the SEC does (also declaring this case is not political implies other ones are, so it’d be weird to do) and staff refused to sign the pledge. With basically no one behind him, Uyeda voted no on the motion to sue Musk, and the motion passed, 4 to 1.

And now, a little over a month later, Uyeda has been tapped by Trump to be the acting head of the SEC. The agency is still moving forward with the lawsuit against Musk—in fact, he just got served a court summons related to the case last week that requires him or his lawyers to respond by April 4. But he can probably rest easy knowing the guy at the top of the agency is on his side. That, combined with Trump’s executive order declaring past Biden administration investigations to be politically motivated, the SEC adopting a new rule adding hurdles to conducting investigations, and the ongoing gutting of the agency by Musk himself and the Department of Government Efficiency, gives Musk quite a bit of sway in deciding the outcome of any action against him.