Oh, this was still happening? Sorry, we thought this issue was either resolved prematurely or just faded into obscurity. This week, Musk’s lawyers have once again tried delaying the October Twitter trial to give themselves more time to establish their case for exiting Musk’s original $44 billion takeover bid.

Following former Twitter Security Chief Peter Zatko’s recent allegations about Twitter supposedly misleading the market about its performance and glaring security flaws, Musk’s team has been seeking to meet with Zatko to glean more insight for the case. While the court had ruled Zatko’s claims as admissible during the trial, Musk’s application to delay has once again been denied due to concerns that further delay might prove highly detrimental to Twitter.

Chickening Out? 

Musk’s team already sought to delay the trial to February of 2023 back in July, but Delaware’s Court of Chancery instead sided with Twitter’s view that the optimal choice would be to proceed with the October trial. Last month, Zatko also leveled a range of allegations against his former employer, including the suggestion that Twitter executives deceived federal regulators and deliberately misled the company’s own board, as well as lying about the presence of bots and spam on the service.

The latter is what Musk’s team is likely keen on, with Musk seeking to exit his takeover deal on the premise that the amount of bots and spam on the platform is far higher than what Twitter itself reports, which is supposedly 5% of its total active users. On the other end, various external researchers suggest that this number might even jump to 80%, which does seem alarmingly high. Musk’s team, based on its own assessment, thinks that the bot/spam rate sits at around 27%. Most people also seem to believe that Twitter’s calculation method isn’t the most indicative process. Musk and Co. hope to use insight from Zatko to reinforce their claims on this front – though Twitter’s legal team has repeatedly noted that it might well be irrelevant either way because Musk essentially agreed to, with little to no exit clauses specified.

On the other side, Twitter has continued to subpoena a range of Musk’s allies to strengthen its case that Musk has simply changed his mind about the deal and is now looking to wriggle his way out of his commitments. On this front, Twitter referenced a text message that Musk sent to his banker earlier in May, where Musk urged him to ‘slow down’ the Twitter deal due to certain concerns at the time, which coincidentally fell in line with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Wrap

By then, Musk had already agreed to purchase Twitter and that there was no mechanism for ‘slowing down’ or exiting the deal. Twitter goes on further to say that this exchange is indicative of Musk’s approach that he simply got cold feet and decided that he wanted out and that he had been looking for loopholes ever since.

In any case, Twitter’s legal team appears to hold the high ground, with the specifics of the original transaction set to form the basis of the court’s ruling. Soon enough, we’ll have our winner. At this point, we can’t say bets on Musk and his team are high though.

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Sources 

https://bit.ly/3d0VzEO