A jury has found Elon Musk liable for defrauding investors by deliberately driving down Twitter’s stock price in the tumultuous months leading up to his 2022 acquisition of the social media company for $44 billion. But it absolved him of some fraud allegations, finding that he did not “scheme” to mislead investors.

The civil trial in San Francisco centred on a class-action lawsuit filed just before Musk took control of Twitter, which he later renamed X. Jurors were asked to decide if two tweets and comments Musk made on a podcast in May 2022 amounted to him intentionally defrauding Twitter shareholders, who sold their shares based on Musk’s statements.