Since twitter is no longer publicly traded, he doesn't have to make anything "seem plausible" to the SEC... So the premise of your theory needs some work.
I can shutter my private company whenever I want for whatever reason I want. If the private investors have an issue w/ that, they can sue me.
This has nothing to do with the SEC.
Market manipulation? There are no shares on the market to manipulate. This is WHY companies choose to go private... So that they are no longer beholden to the public shareholders and the regulatory bodies that exist to protect them (the SEC)
Whether he intends it or not, it's going to die when it turns into a far right outrage echo chamber. The only people willing to advertise will be outright scammers. There's a reason why every right wing alternative platform fails. They also tend to fail to attract normies with moderate conservative beliefs. If they do get them, they leave after the userbase reveals itself to be a bunch of racist incels.
I partly agree. He isn't that stupid and things are not so simple that twitter would just go under.
He is not that smart either. He is a petulant child. Either the money he has, or from before, he is a narcissist and he thinks he knows better than anyone else. He doesn't get dettered by having failures.
Eh... They would have lost money as he bought Twitter for more than it was worth and once he bought it the edge funds were forced to close their positions as Twitter wasn't on the market anymore.
Unless you're talking about shorting Tesla in which case sure, but that's Elon's piggy bank, so that wouldn't make much sense.