Musk seeks delay in Twitter trial over whistleblowers security complaint

Following Peiter Zatko’s revelations about Twitter, tech billionaire Elon Musk is seeking to delay the trial to November citing the whistleblower’s complaint as another reaason to scrap the deal, court filings revealed on August 30, 2022.

At a hearing with Delaware Chancery judge Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, the world’s richest man asked that the two parties involved in the suit continue to brief their cases until November 10. Musk suggested that after the brief, the two should discuss what evidence should be made permissible during the trial. Finally, the co-founder of Tesla suggested that the trial could be held that month “subject to the court’s availability.” His motion to amend his original complaint was filed under seal and will likely be made public in the coming days.

The court filing came just a day after the SpaceX founder wrote a fresh letter to Twitter including the whistleblower allegations as another reason he was scrapping the deal. In July this year, the CEO of Tesla had sent his first termination letter to the microblogging site accusing them of not properly disclosing the amount of bot and spam accounts on its platform. 

In a complaint made public last week, Zatko alleged that Twitter had misled regulators about the security measures it had in place. For Musk, the former Twitter security chief’s complaint to the Securities Exchange Commission and Federal Trade Commission holds value as it details how the company had no idea how many spam accounts Twitter actually has on its platform.

Musk sent Zatko a subpoena this week, which has not come as a surprise to most experts in the field. The tech billionaire is seeking to strengthen his case with the information from Zatko. 

Already, the former Twitter security chief has already received multiple summons from different committees in Congress, with one hearing set for September 13. 

The two parties are scheduled to go to court on October 17 until October 21 at the Delaware Court of Chancery. 

The world’s richest man had offered to buy Twitter back in April this year at 38% more than the price per share at the time. Twitter’s price per share at the time of the deal was $51.70, whereas Musk was willing to pay $54.20 to buy the company, at a total value of $44 billion.