Elon Musk wants Twitter’s lawsuit against him to be postponed for a month. If it were up to the Tesla boss, the case would then be heard in November instead of October.
Earlier on Tuesday, it had also become clear that Musk provided a new reason to avoid the Twitter takeover: criticism of the company’s leadership by a whistleblower.
Musk’s lawyers wrote in court documents that the whistleblower’s allegations show that Twitter violated the terms of the takeover. The lawyers write about, among other things, “blatant shortcomings” in protecting against the platform’s hackers and other privacy issues.
Former Twitter head of security Peiter Zatko alleges that the social media company did not properly handle users’ personal data. For example, part of the software was no longer up-to-date. Executives also withheld information about data breaches and poor user data protection. According to Zatko, the top people on Twitter also didn’t know or care about the number of spam or robot accounts.
Twitter has said that Musk’s letter is not legally valid and that Twitter has not violated the terms of the deal. In addition, Twitter has already dismissed Zatko’s testimony as “a false story, full of contradictions and inaccuracies.”
Musk had previously wanted the lawsuit to start later, while Twitter pushed for an early start, possibly as early as September. Finally, a judge in Delaware decided to pick a date in mid-October. In recent weeks, there has nevertheless been the necessary legal hassle, especially demands from Musk to get additional information from Twitter.
The wealthiest man in the world had $44 billion for the social media company in April but wanted to get rid of the takeover in July. Then, Twitter would have too few real people among its users and too many bots.
Meanwhile, two shareholder advisors supported Musk’s offer. Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis both believe that Musk’s takeover offers benefits to Twitter shareholders. ISS states that the situation is unique but that shareholders should focus on the content of the offer and not on the “noise around it.”