Elon Musk Seeks Recusal of Delaware Judge Who "Liked" LinkedIn Post Cheering His Defeat in Unrelated Case

Musk lawyers try to bar judge over LinkedIn ‘like’ cheering legal defeat

Lawyers for Elon Musk and Tesla have asked a Delaware judge to step back from cases involving the billionaire entrepreneur, after her account “liked” a LinkedIn post celebrating his recent legal defeat in California.

Musk’s law firm Quinn Emanuel wrote that because Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick had liked the “inflammatory” post and thereby created “a perception of bias against Mr. Musk in these cases, recusal is necessary and warranted”.

The LinkedIn post that McCormick’s account reacted to related to a federal case in California, in which a jury last week found Musk had defrauded Twitter investors. Musk may be on the hook for billions in damages, if the jury verdict survives appeals.

A jury consultant in the federal case, who had worked for the shareholders, congratulated the plaintiff’s law firm on the social media platform and wrote: “Sorry, Elon. Sorry, Quinn Emanuel. Thanks $2 billion for your help in this trial. It was a pleasure working against you.”

McCormick said she was not aware that she had liked the post until “LinkedIn recently reported that I hit the heart-in-hand icon intended to show a sign of ‘support’ concerning a LinkedIn post about Mr. Musk”.

“I either did not click the ‘support’ icon at all, or I did so accidentally. I do not believe that I did it accidentally,” she added, in a letter to attorneys.

She Was Invisible for Six Months. Then She Found Out She Was Even More Invisible Than She Thought

On March 4, 2026, something happened before the Honorable Sparkle Sooknanan in SEC v. Musk that apparently even Margaret Ryan could not stomach. Musk’s attorney Sarah Concannon disclosed the following into the public record, almost in passing:

“ . . . I was informed this morning that we had made progress and was going to be before you asking you to adjourn your decision on the motion for summary judgment pending further discussions. Unfortunately, my colleagues at the SEC were not fully read in on that.”

“That” being active settlement negotiations to resolve a high-profile federal enforcement action.

Judge Sooknanan — who has demonstrated throughout this proceeding that she still operates as though rules and procedures mean something — did not let it pass. She asked again, carefully, the way you ask when you are certain you heard correctly but need the other person to say it out loud one more time:

“Your colleagues at the SEC were not read in to discussions to resolve the case?”

And then again:

“Those discussions didn’t involve counsel in this case?”

Musk’s counsel immediately asked for a sidebar — her exact words:

“Your Honor, if we could have a sidebar. I understand there’s press in the gallery, if we’re going to discuss about the specifics of that.” There was press in the gallery — no need to humiliate the SEC in public if possible. No need to let the world know just how upside down things have become in the SEC enforcement division, where its own career staff are cut out of all negotiations.

Read that sequence again. The SEC’s own litigation team — standing at the plaintiff’s table, the lawyers who built the case, who are officers of the court — had been cut out of settlement negotiations in their own matter. And when a federal judge surfaced it in open court, the instinct was to lower the volume.

Ryan resigned less than two days later. Effective immediately.

Tether (USDT) says it selected a ‘big four’ firm for its first audit

Tether, the crypto company behind the most popular stablecoin USDT, said Tuesday it has selected a “Big Four” auditing firm to conduct its first full financial statement audit.

“The Big Four Firm was selected through a competitive process because the organisation is already operating at Big Four audit standard,” said Simon McWilliams, Chief Financial Officer of Tether. “The audit will be delivered.”

The company has long published periodic attestations of the assets backing the value of its $184 billion U.S. dollar stablecoin USDT. A full audit goes further: It requires a detailed review of assets, liabilities, controls and reporting systems.

SEC Must Release Recording of Musk Interview With Investigators

The US Securities and Exchange Commission was ordered to release the recording of a 2018 interview between Elon Musk and investigators during the agency’s probe into the Tesla CEO and his tweets.

The agency failed to identify a “substantial privacy interest that would be actually impeded by releasing the recording,” Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the US District Court for the District of Columbia said Monday.

Since the SEC already disclosed the substance of the interview when it released a 281-page redacted transcript and brought a “highly public” enforcement action against Musk for alleged securities fraud, the judge said, the usual reasons to withhold law enforcement records don’t hold weight here. Musk also publicly spoke about the investigation after he settled with the SEC for $20 million.

“The cat is out of the bag,” Chutkan wrote.

Bayesian superyacht owner Mike Lynch’s widow faces bankruptcy after fraud lawsuit

The estate of the British tycoon killed when his luxury superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily was ordered to pay over $1.2 billion stemming from a 2015 lawsuit, a ruling that could drag his widow into a devastating bankruptcy.

American tech giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) was handed the 10-figure award after it successfully won its case seeking to recoup from its losses in the 2011 acquisition of Mike Lynch’s software firm, Autonomy, he was accused of fraudulently manipulating before the sale, London’s High Court ruled Tuesday.

Lynch, 59, was killed alongside his teen daughter, Hannah, and five others when his superyacht, Bayesian, sank on Aug. 19, 2024.

The late CEO — once dubbed Britain’s Bill Gates — left his widow, Angela Bacares, with his estate, estimated at $669 million, along with financial and legal headaches after his death.