The RICO attorney Jeffrey Grell has set the record straight on Elon Musk’s recent antitrust lawsuit against the advertisers.
In his conversation with the Buisness Insider, Grell explained that how Musk is wrongfully encouraging companies to sue advertisers under RICO act as the organization deals with unlawful activities only.
The owner of X (formerly Twitter) filed a lawsuit against the advertisers accusing them of illegally boycotting the platform to "collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue.”
In addition to this, Musk shared a post on X calling the boycotted companies to sue advertisers, claiming there could be "criminal liability via the RICO Act."
Grell has explained that RICO, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was originally used to take down corrupt mafia involved in crimes like fraud, robbery, bribery, gambling, extortion, and arson.
“You don't have the right to do business with anybody," he told the publication, adding, “I think that Musk is trying to get some PR mileage out of RICO without actually filing a RICO claim here."
He went on to explain, "If his lawyers thought that he had a civil RICO claim, they more than likely would've brought it in the claim that they filed."
To note, Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter in October 2022 and renamed it to X reduced features that diluted inciteful speech and misinformation.
As a result, X's top advertisers had stopped fearing their products and services on the platform to avoid being associated with questionable content.
Grell explained that advertisers could see competitors not featuring their products on Musk's X fearing that, "'I'm going to get off Twitter. I don't want to be blacklisted if I'm advertising on a platform that is getting canceled.'"
"That's just parallel conduct," he added.
