Twitter has suspended the accounts of Plainsite and its founder Aaron Greenspan, who is known for being a prolific critic of Tesla and Elon Musk. Plainsite is an online database that provides access to state and federal court filings as well as other public records to its users for free. In addition, the site offers analytics features to paying subscribers, which can help lawyers and pro-se litigants gain insights about attorneys, judges, government offices, and the law.
Greenspan has been meticulously tracking litigation involving companies in the United States, including Tesla, Twitter (which Musk took private in an acquisition last year), as well as competitors GM, Meta, and several others. He and Musk have also been involved in litigation over the years. At the time Plainsite’s account was suspended, it had over 24,000 listed followers on Twitter. Greenspan’s personal account had approximately 2,500 followers.
Twitter’s Public Statements Seem to Contradict the Suspension
The suspension stands in contrast to public statements made by Twitter’s executive chairman and CTO Elon Musk, and newly-appointed CEO Linda Yaccarino. In April 2022, after Musk announced his intention to acquire Twitter, he wrote in a tweet that he hoped that even his worst critics would remain on Twitter because that is what free speech means. More recently, Yaccarino wrote in a company-wide memo that a healthy civilization needs an “unfiltered exchange of information and open dialogue about the things that matter most to us.” She also stated in the memo that “You should have the freedom to speak your mind. We all should.”
Greenspan has not yet received information from Twitter regarding the suspension of his accounts, although he has requested a reinstatement of both.
Greenspan’s Legal Transparency Initiative
Greenspan discussed some of the reasons why he started Plainsite, which he refers to as a “legal transparency initiative,” and how he became regarded as an Elon Musk nemesis. “I created Plainsite with two friends in 2011 because we were all wondering why Occupy Wall Street didn’t have the impact we expected,” he said. “No financial execs went to jail for the 2008 financial crisis, even though it was obvious that there had been criminal wrongdoing somewhere. One reason we thought was that people didn’t understand what the law said and what the loopholes banks or execs were able to exploit to get out of being held accountable.”
Over the years, Greenspan has shorted stock in some of the companies he has researched and written about on Plainsite, disclosing those positions when he held them. He is not currently shorting Tesla, but he has done so in the past. Plainsite began its focused research on Tesla in 2018 after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Musk and Tesla with civil securities fraud.
The charges came after Musk tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share and had funding secured to do so, causing a halt in trading that day and sending Tesla stock into a period of volatility for weeks. Musk and Tesla settled the charges with the regulators, without admission of guilt or the ability to claim innocence.
Since 2018, Greenspan has made court filings and other public records available on Plainsite that revealed:
– Twitter is facing more than 25 lawsuits for non-payment to vendors since Elon Musk took over in October 2022.
– Even as Musk continuously promised shareholders that Tesla was on the brink of delivering a “level 4-5” self-driving robotaxi, the company’s Autopilot engineers categorized its most advanced driver assistance systems as “level 2” in official government communications with the California DMV. A level 2 system is not self-driving and requires drivers to keep their hands on the wheel.
– Complaints sent to attorneys general in Texas, Nevada, and Ohio, showing that Tesla customers there were not able to get the EV maker to provide required documentation to register their vehicles with local DMVs.
– Tesla CEO Elon Musk once attempted to refer a former process technician at Tesla’s Gigafactory, whistleblower, Martin Tripp, to the US Attorney’s office for the District of Nevada for criminal prosecution.
– Elon Musk knew but did not tell shareholders that SolarCity was facing a liquidity crisis at the time the Tesla board was pushing for an acquisition of the solar installer, which was started by Musk’s first cousins and where Musk was a major investor and board member.
– In May 2020, Greenspan sued a Tesla promoter alleging harassment and named Elon Musk as a party contributing to that harassment in the lawsuit.
In Feb. 2023, Musk sued Greenspan for publishing correspondence between the two of them on Twitter and Plainsite. The emails are still available on Plainsite.
Twitter has not yet provided a comment regarding the suspension.
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