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Now that Elon Musk is back on board with buying Twitter at his original bid price (that is, after he tried to back out of the agreement, triggering a lawsuit), he wants the social media company to drop all litigation to close the deal.
But according to a filing with Delaware’s Court of Chancery on Thursday, Musk’s side said Twitter is refusing to accept the deal. Per the Associated Press, Musk’s lawyers are asking a Delaware court to stop the upcoming Oct. 17 trial to give the tech mogul time to secure financing for the deal.
“Twitter will not take yes for an answer,” the filing says. “Astonishingly, they have insisted on proceeding with this litigation, recklessly putting the deal at risk and gambling with their stockholders’ interests.”
Musk’s attorneys claim that by Twitter refusing to set aside its litigation, the upcoming Oct. 17 trial would “impede the deal moving forward.”
But since Musk has tried to back out of the deal before, Twitter’s alleged refusal is likely the company working to ensure he doesn’t try to walk away again.
Before it was halted, the Twitter stock rose on the news that the world’s richest man would theoretically obey the terms of a merger agreement he signed after waiving due diligence, but it remains below $50 a share, whereas Musk’s offer stands at $54.20. Analysts have said the price overvalues Twitter by $20 a share — meaning Musk overpaid by some $17 billion.
Musk, an inveterate tweeter, earned substantial mockery on Tuesday for sharing a naive, pro-Russia “peace” plan for Ukraine on the social media site — one swiftly approved by the Kremlin and condemned by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It served as a nice distraction on the same day that his electric car company, Tesla, fell short of Wall Street’s third-quarter forecasts despite delivering a record number of vehicles.
The billionaire unconvincingly blamed the negative reaction to his diplomatic suggestion on a “bot attack,” alluding once more to his supposed reasoning for scuttling the Twitter takeover: too much spam and fake activity. This ongoing complaint is almost certainly due to his own particular experience as a highly engaged user with over 100 million followers — many of which are bots. But any concern over the influence of automated accounts seems to have evaporated in the past 24 hours.
Another potential factor in Musk’s reversal is legal discovery. Last week, as he and Twitter prepared to go to trial in the Delaware Court of Chancery to decide the fate of the acquisition, a trove of his text messages became public. Musk had once been eager to see the inner workings and dark secrets of Twitter revealed in this process but instead had his conversations about the platform with his ultra-wealthy, sycophantic peers aired out for all to read. The logs also reveal how Musk was scrounging for financing on the deal from magnates like Larry Ellison and fielding advice from podcaster Joe Rogan to “liberate” Twitter from the “censorship happy mob.”
And with two weeks to go until the trial, Musk’s case was looking shaky on the merits, with Twitter’s lawyers arguing that the CEO’s own data on spam accounts align with their estimates. They also accused him of destroying evidence along with his financial adviser, Jared Burchall.
Twitter has yet to respond to Musk’s latest change of heart or address employees about it. However, Musk has tweeted that he’s now buying the app in order to create one of his own.
“Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” he wrote, nonsensically.
This article was updated on 10/6 with Musk’s attorney’s latest court filings.
