Who is Gary Gensler? Elon Musk questions SEC chairman over 48-hour deadline to settle federal probe into his 2022 Twitter purchase

On Friday, December 13, Elon Musk shared a picture of a letter from his lawyer, Alex Spiro, addressing the current SEC chairman, Gary Gensler.

Spiro's letter indicated they had received a letter from the Commission for Musk to accept a settlement demand by making a monetary payment within 48 hours; otherwise, the Tesla CEO would face unspecified charges "imminently."

Musk captioned the tweet:

"Oh Gary, how could you do this to me?"

The settlement offered by Gary Gensler was in relation to a federal investigation into potential securities fraud stemming from his 2022 purchase of Twitter, now called X.

Gary Gensler was appointed to serve as the Chair of the US SEC by President Joe Biden in February 2021 and sworn into office two months later.

In the letter shared on X, Spiro, who had also been subpoenaed for his testimony in the investigation, dismissed the letter because it was allegedly part of "an improperly motivated campaign against Mr. Musk."

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Gary Gensler worked at Goldman Sachs for 18 years

Born on October 18, 1957, Gary Gensler is an investment banker turned American government official born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. Gensler graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's business school, Wharton, with a degree in economics, followed by a master's degree in business administration.

In 1979, Gary joined Goldman Sachs, where he worked as a mergers and acquisitions banker. He headed the firm’s Media Group, led fixed income & currency trading in Asia, and was co-head of finance, responsible for the firm's worldwide Controllers and Treasury efforts. Gensler also became a partner at the age of 30, making him the youngest partner at the firm.

When Gensler completed 18 years at the company, he was nominated by President Bill Clinton to be the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. This led Gensler to leave his job at Sachs.

In 1997, Gary Gensler joined the US Department of the Treasury as the Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets. Two years later, he became the Undersecretary for Domestic Finance, a position he held until 2021. During his service period at the Treasury Department, Gensler was also awarded the Alexander Hamilton Award - the agency's highest honor.

In 2001, Paul Sarbanes - a US Senator and the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee at the time, appointed Gary as his Senior Advisor. Seven years later, Barack Obama, the then-president, nominated Gensler to serve as Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Gary was sworn into the CFTC office in May 2009 and was later described as "one of the leading reformers after the financial crisis." Five years later, Gensler was awarded the 2014 Tamar Frankel Fiduciary Prize for his work to reform the financial regulatory system.

In 2017, Gary Gensley was selected to serve as a Chairman of the Maryland Financial Consumer Protection Commission, a position he held for two years before joining the MIT Sloan School of Management as a professor of the Practice of Global Economics and Management. He was also a senior advisor at the MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative.

Gensler was married to photo collagist and filmmaker Francesca Danieli in 1986 and has three daughters - Anna, Lee, and Isabel - with her. Danieli passed away in 2006 due to breast cancer. Gensler is an active runner and mountain climber, having finished nine marathons, an ultramarathon, summited Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Rainier.

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Gary Gensler's effort to open an investigation into Elon Musk comes after his step down from the Securities and Exchange Commission was announced on November 2 through an SEC press release. The decision will be effective at 12:00 pm on January 20, 2025, per the press releases published on the SEC's official website.