Why wouldn't Elon cook the books?

Genuinely curious about this. I'm not suggesting he is or that he will but whether you're bullish or bearish about Tesla it's hard to imagine april earnings being a positive read. Even if the stock bounces back on track (wouldn't surprise me) it feels like you need to be a diehard fan of Tesla to see a silver lining with the way Elon is 'running' the company and humanoids or robotaxis may be on the way but they're not here now and it's going to be a while, best case.

With the IRS hamstrung and the SEC being whipped by Trump along with the pretty blatant market... Involvement.. by Trump and Musk it feels like we've abandoned corporate ethics completely. So why wouldn't Elon cook the books? Is it not that easy? Is it very obvious? Would it be more risk vs. reward? Is there no point?

I apologize if this isn't the right sub for this but with the polarization of reddit, I don't know where the right place would be.