Elon Musk has urged a federal judge to shift a trial in a shareholder lawsuit out of San Francisco because he says negative local media coverage has biased potential jurors against him. Instead, in a filing submitted late on Friday, Musk’s lawyers argue that the trial should be moved to a federal court in western Texas, which includes the state capital of Austin. Musk relocated his electric car company, Tesla, to Austin in late 2021. If a move is not possible, Musk’s lawyers urged that the trial, expected to begin on January 17, be postponed until negative publicity around Musk’s purchase of Twitter has died down. “For the last several months, the local media have saturated this district with biased and negative stories about Mr Musk,” lawyer Alex Spiro wrote in a court filing. Those items have personally blamed Musk for recent lay-offs at Twitter, Spiro wrote, and have charged that the job cuts may have even violated laws. The shareholder lawsuit stems from Musk’s tweets in August 2018 when he said he had sufficient financing to take Tesla private at US$420 a share, an announcement that caused heavy volatility in Tesla’s share price. In a victory for the shareholders last spring, Judge Edward Chen ruled that the tweets were false and reckless. Musk tells Tesla workers not to be ‘bothered by stock market craziness’ The filing by Musk’s lawyers also notes that Twitter has laid off about 1,000 residents in the San Francisco area since he bought the company in late October. “A substantial portion of the jury pool … is likely to hold a personal and material bias against Mr Musk as a result of recent lay-offs at one of his companies as individual prospective jurors – or their friends and relatives – may have been personally impacted,” the filing said. Musk has also been criticised by San Francisco’s mayor and other local officials for the job cuts, the filing said.