I expect that the plaintiffs that used AF articles likely made a formal complaint to the SEC. They were stopped in their tracks in court, so the typical fallback, if you wanted to make mischief and your counsel would be sanctioned in court for refiling, would be to go to a regulatory agency and keep the nonsense up.
Then the discovery is free. You don't have to pay a lawyer either or not as much as you would if they were litigating it themselves. It's a typical short strategy. Then when the SEC looks into the already shown to be bogus complaint, you say, "See, they're under investigation." For the very reason that MI Dendream said, there is never anything that comes of it, but it doesn't matter, you can keep that nonsense alive all day and night for as long as you want.
However, most companies have similar inquiries at some point. Once you get of the OTC and the shorts are jockeying for the attention of professional money managers, they have far less influence. They will never be more powerful from a spin context than now.
One key thing I typically bring up though. You have not seen a Wells Letter. You will virtually always see those if an investigation has any legs whatsoever. It signifies that the SEC is taking enforcement action against a company. That did not happen here. I doubt anything will come from the previously dismissed case, even when the facts are re-raised with a different agency. It was dismissed for failure to state a claim for a reason. But simply getting the SEC to ask some questions and inquire, is always enough for shorts to revive their ongoing assault, indefinitely. They use this pr tactic all the time.
As for "fake news", that's what the Russians did. It's called propaganda. It has been around for a long, long time. Public relations, as a discipline is also typically getting people distracted to look at the wrong thing, while something else is right in front of them. It's basically public relations. But it's also not typically from a reliable source.
There are other tactics shorts use to falsely claim that companies are under SEC investigation. I've seen them all. I won't go into the details, but they are vaguely not factually incorrect, but they are also not true, frequently. It's one of many tactics they use to drive away capital and investors and keep stocks from rising.
Usually, it's followed by a cheap, forced buyout. Hence the non-stop attacks on LP. They've got to bash her and steal it from her too. It has become a completely obvious game they play. They run it over and over and over again.
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