Elon Musk argued that Peiter “Mudge” Zatko’s recent whistleblower complaint offers new justifications for his decision to terminate the acquisition of Twitter.
Elon Musk’s legal team filed a new “Termination letter” with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, arguing that Zatko’s complaint, which alleged that Twitter’s staff had been deceptive about security practices and spam, provides sufficient justification for his decision to terminate his merger agreement.
“[Zatko’s] allegations, if true, demonstrate that Twitter has breached the following provisions of the Merger Agreement, thereby giving the Musk Parties the right to terminate the Merger Agreement pursuant to its terms as more fully described below,” the letter reads.
ELON MUSK SUBPOENAS TWITTER WHISTLEBLOWER OVER SPAMBOT-RELATED DOCUMENTS
The newly filed termination letter represents a new line of attack in Musk’s efforts to get out of his $44 billion acquisition of the company. Zatko also received a subpoena on Monday requesting all relevant documents to the company’s spam bot counts and its security practices.
The social media company’s former head of security filed a whistleblower complaint last month, saying Twitter’s security practices had “extreme, egregious deficiencies” and that it did not take sufficient measures to protect its users. Zatko also said that Twitter was unable to deliver updated software to its servers, its executives overseeing security had concealed information from the company’s board of directors, and claimed that India had demanded it to hire an agent of the government.
Zatko is scheduled to appear before Congress on Sept. 13.
Twitter’s and Musk’s legal teams are scheduled to meet from Oct. 17 to Oct. 21 for an expedited trial over Twitter’s lawsuit about Musk’s termination of the deal. The two parties have filed multiple subpoenas seeking information regarding Twitter’s practices and Musk’s finances. Twitter filed multiple subpoenas to Musk’s compatriots for documentation discussing the funding of Musk’s planned $44 billion acquisition of the company. Musk himself filed a subpoena against former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey while seeking information about his time at the company.
Musk’s legal defense has focused on finding proof that Twitter has been deceptive about the number of users it categorizes as bots. A judge from the Delaware Court of Chancery ruled on Aug. 15 that Musk could only interview one out of 22 Twitter employees involved in the testing or confirm the number of bots on the platform.
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The judge overseeing Musk and Twitter’s trial ruled on Thursday that Musk was not allowed access to all of Twitter’s data regarding spam bots due to the request being “overly broad” but that he could access the data connected to an audit of around 9,000 accounts in the fourth quarter of 2022.
