Elon Musk’s latest reason to drop the Twitter deal

Elon Musk gets into a bitter legal battle with Twitter (file)

New York:

Elon Musk on Friday added Twitter’s severance payment to a whistleblower to the list of reasons he feels entitled to walk away from his $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform.

A termination letter sent to Twitter accused the company of failing to inform it of paying millions of dollars in severance compensation in June to departing head of security Peter Zatko, who filed a whistleblower complaint criticizing Twitter’s security practices, according to a transcript of the report. Letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Musk’s lawyers argued that his failure to obtain his consent before paying Zatko provided another legal basis for breaking the merger deal with Twitter he signed in April.

Twitter is different.

“My friend appears to be arguing that Twitter should have unduly informed Musk of the existence of a disgruntled former employee who made various allegations that were inquired and found to be unfounded,” Twitter attorney William Savitt said earlier this week.

“This makes no sense.”

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Musk, the world’s richest man, said in his original termination letter that he called off the deal because he was misled by Twitter about the number of bot accounts on his platform, allegations the company rejected.

In a mixed ruling issued earlier this week, Kathleen McCormick, the Delaware court counsel who is overseeing the case, said Musk may add to affidavits from Zatko that appeared in August.

But she rejected his request to delay the lawsuit, saying that prolonging the lawsuit “would risk more harm to Twitter than it could justify.”

Musk has been locked in a bitter legal battle with Twitter since he announced in July that he was halting the company’s acquisition after a complex and volatile courtship that lasted for months.

The five-day trial is scheduled to begin October 17 in Delaware court.

(This story has not been edited by the NDTV crew and is automatically generated from a shared feed.)