Musk testifies in Delaware, defending his massive Tesla pay 

WILMINGTON, Del. — In a Delaware courtroom Wednesday, Elon Musk defended a 2018 compensation package as Tesla CEO that turned out to be worth more than $50 billion, helping to make him the world’s richest person. 

Musk took the stand for the first time in a trial stemming from a Tesla shareholder lawsuit filed in 2018. Plaintiff Richard Tornetta alleges the company erred in approving a pay package for Musk that dwarfs even those of other top tech executives, despite Musk splitting his time between Tesla and the several other companies he runs — including, most recently, Twitter, which he acquired for $44 billion last month.

Under questioning from the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Musk defended bringing Tesla engineers to Twitter to evaluate Twitter’s engineering staff ahead of mass layoffs at the social media platform. He said their participation was “voluntary,” “after hours,” and “a minor thing." Pressed as to whether anyone on Tesla’s board had contacted Musk to suggest that it might be problematic to use a public company’s employees to help his other, private company, Musk said he did not recall any such conversation.

Musk also acknowledged a tweet claiming he planned to sleep on the floor at Twitter until the organization was fixed — a process which Musk said in court Wednesday that he expected to be complete by the end of this week.