Photo: The B Word
Elon Musk’s lawyers filed another notice to terminate his $44 billion Twitter deal this week, citing new reasons related to a recent whistleblower complaint.
Musk filed another court notice on Tuesday to back out of his deal with Twitter, noting the recent complaints from Twitter’s Former Security Head Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, as reported by CNBC.
Zatko alleged “extreme, egregious deficiencies” at Twitter, specifically with regards to content moderation, privacy and security. Additionally, Zatko said company executives didn’t have the resources to provide bot data that Musk staked his purchase contract on.
Elon Musk Lawyers Seek Names of Twitter Staff in Charge of Bot Data: Report https://t.co/oeuGTZM1jc
— TeslaNorth.com (@RealTeslaNorth) August 11, 2022
Musk’s legal team filed a follow-up notice on Tuesday noting “additional and distinct bases” to end the deal, adding that Zatko’s claims put Twitter in “material noncompliance” with a 2011 Federal Trade Commission agreement.
“Allegations regarding certain facts, known to Twitter prior to and as of July 8, 2022, but undisclosed to the Musk Parties prior to and at that time, have since come to light that provide additional and distinct bases to terminate the Merger Agreement,” Musk’s legal team wrote.
Earlier this week, Judge Kathaleen McCormick ordered Twitter to provide Musk with further details on bot and spam accounts. However, McCormick limited the required information to just 9,000 user accounts, saying that an audit of more than 200 million users on the monetizable daily active users (mDAU) metric would be too tedious.
