That’s the funny thing; he wasn’t forced into it. He could have just paid $1bn for his idiotic 420 joke (or probably much less if he’d settled out of court) and gotten away without any further damage. But instead, he took out a $13 billion loan and spent another $21bn of his own money for it. So instead of setting $1bn or less on fire, he set $34 billion on fire. Plus the additional money that his idiotic compatriots put up. This truly is the dumbest timeline.
Edit: He also ended up selling a shit load of his TSLA stock to make one of his payments to the bank, which caused tesla to tank in the market costing him untold billions as well. He is not a smart man.