- Musk is attempting to terminate his $44 billion deal with Twitter Inc. without paying a $1 billion termination fee.
- “It won’t make sense to buy Twitter if we’re headed toward World War III,” Musk wrote to a banker, lawyer says.
- The hearing was adjourned without a decision being made on the injunction request.
Elon Musk’s attorney argued to the judge on Tuesday that the judge should postpone the trial for a few weeks so that the billionaire can look into allegations of security on the social media platform made by a whistleblower.
Musk is attempting to terminate his $44 billion deal with Twitter Inc.
Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney, questioned why justice didn’t require a few weeks to investigate this during a hearing in Wilmington, Delaware.
Whistleblower charges that were made public last month gave Musk, the richest man in the world, new support for his improbable attempt to terminate the agreement without paying a $1 billion termination fee, according to legal experts.
Peiter Zatko, a well-known hacker known as “Mudge,” who served as Twitter’s previous head of security, claimed in a complaint to authorities that the firm misrepresented that it had a reliable data security strategy.
Twitter has called Zatko’s claims “false narratives,” and on Tuesday, the company’s counsel charged that the billionaire was using the whistleblower claims to hide the fact that he allegedly rushed into buying the business without fully understanding the risks.
Mr. Musk is attributing his lack of standard due diligence to Twitter, according to William Savitt, an attorney for the company.
He pleaded with the court to stop Musk from including whistleblower claims in his complaint, but if that were to happen, he said the five-day trial should start on October 17 as scheduled.
“It won’t make sense to buy Twitter if we’re headed toward World War III,” Musk wrote in a message to a banker in early May that surfaced in the litigation, Savitt said.
According to Savitt, it shows that Musk is looking for any means to get out of the agreement and that his early comments about bots and phoney accounts were just a cover for doing so.
Musk and Twitter are battling it out in court. The business is requesting an injunction from Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery compelling Musk to purchase the business at the $54.20 per share price he agreed to in April.
Twitter’s stock slightly increased to close Tuesday’s session at $38.65 per share.
Tuesday’s hearing was adjourned by McCormick without a decision date being announced.
Musk, who is also the CEO of the electric car manufacturer Tesla Inc., first countersued Twitter for deceiving him about the number of phoney or automated accounts the social media platform was home to, which he claimed permitted him to back out of the arrangement.
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