Elon Musk’s lawyers pounced on revelations by a Twitter whistleblower on Wednesday to try to force the platform to release vast amounts of information in its fight against the billionaire’s takeover bid.
The Tesla chief’s team told a US judge the former Twitter security chief’s allegations of major security flaws and problematic practices had strengthened their case, which was struggling to gain momentum in court.
Musk has attempted to back out of the $44 billion deal, saying Twitter misled him about the number of fake or spam accounts, prompting strong denials and a lawsuit from the social media firm have led.
Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, repeatedly quoted Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko in a 90-minute hearing about what data the firm would need to release ahead of its October trial.
“As Mr. Zatko puts it, management had no appetite to properly measure the prevalence of bot accounts,” Spiro told Judge Kathaleen McCormick in an eastern Delaware state court.
Twitter won some early battles in the case, including an accelerated court date, and its shares were up as analysts had predicted the platform would prevail against the volatile billionaire.
But Zatko’s whistleblower complaint with US authorities, which surfaced on Tuesday, was seized by Musk’s lawyers to try to gain momentum in the case.
– “You want a replay” –
Spiro attempted to persuade the judge to order Twitter to hand over billions of “data points,” including users’ phone numbers and locations, arguing that the information was needed to prove Twitter was being dishonest about spam accounts be.
Twitter attorney Bradley Wilson countered that the company hadn’t deceived anyone and that Musk wanted an “overhaul” on questions he should have asked before making his unsolicited takeover bid earlier this year.
While Twitter has pointed out that Musk has opted out of due diligence typically associated with merger deals, Spiro told the judge that the billionaire trusts the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The stock watchdog was one of the addressees of Zatko’s complaint, which accuses Twitter of having provided untrue information on account numbers because “if exact measurements were ever to be known, it would damage the company’s image and valuation”.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the complaint and its use by Musk’s attorneys would change the course of the case.
The judge has yet to rule on Musk’s attorneys’ data demands, and Zatko’s influence may be clearer after his scheduled testimony before US lawmakers on Sept. 13.
Twitter refuses to share certain types of data for reasons including the possibility of violating users’ legally protected privacy, argued his attorney Wilson.
“They want a replay, they want to tell the spam,” he said of Musk’s team.
“They want to get all the information that the reviewers had so their experts, I assume, can do their own count and see if they come up with another number.”
Even if Musk’s experts came to a different conclusion about the number of spam accounts on Twitter, it wouldn’t be a violation serious enough to breach the acquisition agreement, Twitter lawyers argue.
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