Elon Musk

• The vote comes as Musk is attempting to have the agreement terminated.
• Twitter filed a lawsuit against Musk for allegedly breaking the terms of the deal.
• A trial is scheduled to start in October.

Tuesday’s shareholder vote approved Elon Musk’s $44 billion offer to buy Twitter and take it private.

The vote comes as Musk is attempting to have the agreement terminated.

He questions Twitter’s self-reported percentage of bogus accounts and claims the business was not completely transparent in its explanation of how the calculation was made.

Twitter has maintained that fewer than 5% of monetizable daily active users are spam or false, and it claims to have given Musk all the information necessary to fulfil the terms of the agreement.

Twitter filed a lawsuit against Musk for allegedly breaking the terms of the deal, and the Delaware Court of Chancery is currently hearing the matter.

A trial is scheduled to start in the middle of October.

A former Twitter security head recently submitted a whistleblower complaint alleging gross securities violations by the company, and the court in the case recently allowed Musk’s team to alter their counterclaim against Twitter to include those claims.

Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, the whistleblower, gave testimony earlier on Tuesday before a Senate committee.

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• 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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• Elon Musk delivered a second letter of deal termination to Twitter on Tuesday.
• He served whistleblower Peiter Zatko with a subpoena demanding information on how Twitter checks spam accounts.
• The five-day trial will start on October 17 in the Delaware Court of Chancery.

After the richest man in the world served a whistleblower with a subpoena demanding information on how Twitter checks spam accounts, Elon Musk delivered a second letter of deal termination to the social media platform.

In July, Musk withdrew from a $44 billion bid for Twitter, claiming that the firm had lied to him and authorities about the actual amount of spam or bot accounts on the microblogging service.

Musk has reportedly asked Peiter Zatko, a whistleblower and the former head of Twitter’s security, for information, mostly regarding how the microblogging site determines which accounts are spam, according to a court document filed on Monday.

Famous hacker “Mudge” Zatko stated in his complaint, which was made public last week, that the corporation had misrepresented its security measures and had placed user growth over spam prevention.

Following the revelation, Musk’s legal team said that allegations based on specific facts that were previously unknown to them but known to Twitter before July 8 had surfaced, offering further and compelling reasons to terminate the agreement.

The summons to Zatko were issued in advance of the five-day trial that will start on October 17 in the Delaware Court of Chancery.

Twitter is requesting that Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick order Musk to purchase the stock at the agreed-upon price of $54.20 a share even if Musk wants to cancel the deal.

According to a regulatory filing made by Musk on Tuesday, a further termination notice with a date of August 29 was also given in case the one from July 8 was found to be invalid for any reason.

Before the bell, shares of Twitter were down 2.5% at $39.02.

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• A US judge ordered Twitter to hand over more information to Elon Musk on bogus accounts.
• The judge reprimanded Musk’s team for making “absurdly broad” requests for data.
• The lawyers for Twitter had voiced fear that Musk would abuse the private information given to him.

A US judge ordered Twitter to hand over more information to Elon Musk on bogus accounts on Thursday, a crucial matter the billionaire is relying on to attempt and get his takeover offer revoked.

While giving the Tesla CEO’s team a chance to support its claim that Musk was deceived, Judge Kathaleen McCormick reprimanded them for making “absurdly broad” requests for “trillions upon trillions of data points.”

The judge ordered Twitter to turn over data on 9,000 accounts that the company audited by the end of 2021, which makes it possible for Musk to utilize the data in his attempt to renegotiate the $44 billion transaction.

Without going into further detail, McCormick stated in her four-page decision that “some additional data from the plaintiff (Twitter) is required.”

Musk claimed that Twitter was lying about the amount of fictitious or spam accounts, which prompted vehement denials and a lawsuit from the social media company that resulted in a trial that has been scheduled for mid-October.

In a hearing on Wednesday, Musk’s attorneys fought hard to get the company to release a ton of documents while capitalizing on a recently exposed Twitter whistleblower’s allegations of major problems at the company.

Bradley Wilson, a lawyer representing Twitter, argued in response that the firm had not misled anyone and that Musk wanted a second chance to ask the questions he should have before making his unsolicited acquisition approach earlier this year.

The firm objected to sharing several data types because it would breach users’ legal rights to privacy, according to its counsel Wilson.

Twitter’s lawyers contend that even if Musk’s experts reach a different conclusion on the volume of spam accounts at the company, that would not constitute a material breach that would allow him to violate the buyout agreement.

In his complaint to US authorities, whistleblower Peiter Zatko claims that Twitter has misrepresented account numbers because “exact measurements would undermine the company’s valuation if they ever became public.”

It wasn’t immediately obvious whether the lawsuit and Musk’s lawyers’ use of it will materially change how the matter is handled.

The lawyers for Twitter had voiced fear that Musk would abuse the private information they gave him.

The billionaire’s staff “have agreed to treat this data as highly confidential,” the court stated.

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