Musk subpoenas former Twitter CEO Dorsey

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
23 Aug 2022 07:33

Tesla chief Elon Musk is still trying to egg on Twitter to hand over its user database in order to come up with a reason as to why he is pulling away from acquiring the big tech firm.

Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has served former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey with a subpoena in a bid to find a "legal" reason that would justify his pull-out of buying the huge social media platform for $44 billion.

The world's wealthiest man had in late April made advances to buy Twitter, and the latter agreed to sell out after a mark-up. On July 8, Musk decided to retract his decision in an official letter.

Records made public on Monday showed that the former chief of Twitter was served with a legal order demanding that he give Musk any communications on documents linked to the takeover deal, in addition to information relating to false or spam accounts or how Twitter calculates how many active users it has.

Discussions by Musk's team on funding the $44 billion deal have been suspended due to the buyers' concerns about the verifiability of the figures Twitter provided on the number of spam accounts on the platform.

Musk's legal team had warned a month ahead of the withdrawal that he could walk away from the negotiations table over acquiring Twitter if the big tech firm continues dismissing his demands to be more explicit about the number of fake and spam accounts on the platform. The news of the entrepreneur potentially dropping the deal caused Twitter shares to dip by 5%.

The subpoena is demanding that anything Dorsey has on the issues from January 2019 be handed over to Musk.

The Tesla CEO has repeatedly accused Twitter of fraud and that the firm had been misleading regarding key aspects of its business, in particular the number of active and spam or bot accounts.

Twitter has been claiming that less than 5% of its user base is comprised of bots.

Meanwhile, Twitter has slammed Musk's attempts at walking away from the deal even if the bot count is found to be wrong due to this not being a clause in the buyout offer the billionaire had made.

The tech giant has also accused Musk of making up the story to try and escape a merger deal that he was no longer interested in.

"Musk's counterclaims, based as they are on distortion, misrepresentation, and outright deception, change nothing," Twitter said in a court filing.

The deal, however, does have a clause obliging the party breaking the agreement - if it were to fall apart - to pay a termination fee of $1 billion.

Musk said earlier this month that if Twitter was able to provide its method of sampling 100 accounts and how it verified that the accounts are real, the $44 billion deal should proceed in accordance with its original terms.

Depending on who wins the case, either Musk or Twitter will be entitled to receiving a breakup fee if the other party is found responsible for the failed agreement.