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Grimes and Azealia Banks Ordered to Preserve DMs in Elon Musk’s “420” Lawsuit

Grimes and Azealia Banks must preserve their Twitter, Instagram, and text messages about the circumstances surrounding Elon Musk’s “420” tweet, according to a subpoena request granted in court today. Attorneys requested the subpoenas as part of a class-action lawsuit filed against Musk that argues his August tweet claiming funding was secured to take Tesla private at a valuation of $420 per share was false and misled investors.

Banks, who was reportedly attempting to record music with Musk’s then-girlfriend Grimes in Los Angeles around the time of the billionaire’s tweet, has claimed Grimes told her Musk chose the $420 share price because Grimes got him interested in marijuana and he thought the weed number was funny. (Musk later told The New York Times that he “was not on weed, to be clear” when he posted the tweet.) Banks has also claimed she was at Musk’s Los Angeles home in the days following the tweet and witnessed him “scrounging for investors to cover his ass.” Musk’s attorneys previously argued that Banks was not a relevant source of information in the case, to which Banks responded, “This is going to get extremely ugly.”

Musk was previously sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding the same tweet and ordered to pay a $20 million fine. The granted subpoenas do not require Banks and Grimes to testify nor submit any messages as evidence in the lawsuit brought by investors, simply that they preserve any relevant material, just in case. Spin has contacted Musk’s attorney, Banks, and a Grimes representative for comment and will update this post if they respond.