https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-09-27/musk-picked-weed-linked-price-to-impress-girlfriend-sec-says
What ? 'Lil help here...
As an officer of a publicly traded company you're not allowed to make any dishonest public statement which could influence the price of the stock. For whatever reason, Musk suggested he had the backing from rich investors to take Tesla private, which suggested they would be buying out all the existing stockholders - which in turn meant the price would have to go up. He didn't have that backing. He isn't taking Tesla private. Apparently he wanted the stock to go up in price, either for the weird reasons suggested or simply because he notoriously hates short sellers.