Whitney Tilson’s email to investors discussing his take on Musk and Montana Skeptic; Follow up re. Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s Buffalo plant.
I’m still not convinced that Tesla is a great short right now, but this company (and especially its CEO) stinks six ways to Sunday… Tesla makes great cars and Musk is a brilliant innovator, engineer, and entrepreneur – but he’s also a malignant narcissit, pathological liar, bully, and con man. My long experience and observation is that stocks of companies run by such men don’t do well (and please spare me the comparisons to Steve Jobs)…
Q3 2019 hedge fund letters, conferences and more
From a friend:
Don’t forget that it was The Montana Skeptic who broke the corrupt Tesla-In-New-York story in a series of articles in the Summer of 2017:
- Tesla: SolarCity's Buffalo Deal Has Lots Of Crooked Bends In The River
- More Dark Corners Of SolarCity's Buffalo Deal, And Some Tesla Topics, Too
- Tesla Has Stiffed New York State On The Riverbend Factory
The latter (Tesla Has Stiffed New York State On The Riverbend Factory) was truly a headline ahead of its time. By investigating the corrupt ways in which NY State altered its contract with Tesla, it laid the groundwork for this $1 billion write-off.
Montana Skeptic and Tesla's strange deal
The Montana Skeptic actually took the time, and had the skill, to investigate the legal agreements between Tesla and NY State. This includes the ways in which the contract was altered, all to Tesla’s benefit and with nothing in return for NY State. In these articles, he effectively predicted that NY State would have to write off its “investment” in Elon Musk. Their near-$1 billion gift to the billionaire, all gone – or at least burned up in smoke on a combination of Elon Musk’s private jets.
One of those private jets was of course used to grease Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who conveniently also introduced a $5,000 Colorado state subsidy to anyone who buys a Tesla in Colorado (Ethics Report On Former Gov. John Hickenlooper Raises Questions).
All that’s needed at this point is a reference to Jeffrey Epstein and someone named Escobar in South America – oh wait…
- The Day Jeffrey Epstein Told Me He Had Dirt on Powerful People (including Musk)
- Elon Musk is feuding with Pablo Escobar's brother about flamethrowers
But back to The Montana Skeptic and his articles in the summer of 2017. Because this detective work unmasked the crooked deal, it angered Musk so much that “someone” doxed The Montana Skeptic and Musk called The Montana’s boss, apparently with the purpose of wanting to silence the man behind this detective work: Tesla And Montana Skeptic: Our Response (“Following a call to his employer by Elon Musk, a Seeking Alpha contributor has been forced to stop contributing to our site.”)
To the best of my knowledge, The Montana Skeptic has not been heard from publicly since. What was that thing about Jeffrey Epstein and Escobar again?...
