Last week, Twitter’s lawyers at a hearing in a Delaware court with the presiding judge Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick said that Musk’s rationale behind terminating the $44 billion deal to buyout was ‘irrelevant’. The logic behind their argument was that data on the spam and bot accounts provided to Musk was “explicitly an estimate” and not an exact figure.
Zatko’s subpoenaed information is likely to help the tech billionaire lay the groundwork for new fraud claims is what Ann Lipton, a professor at the Tulane University Law School told Reuters. However, she said that it is unlikely that Chancellor McCormick will allow new claims in a case which is fast approaching its trial date. Additionally, Lipton told Reuters that Musk had waived due diligence before signing the deal in his quest to buy the company.
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The subpoena comes as no surprise after Zatko’s complaint was made public last week. There was speculation amongst legal experts that Musk would seek information from Zatko in order to strengthen his case, although doubts remain about how effective that strategy will really be. Already, the former Twitter security chief has already received multiple summons from different committees in Congress, with one hearing set for September 13.
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.
After months of uncertainty, the tech billionaire pulled out of the deal citing Twitter’s inadequate response to his requests about information on the number of spam and bot accounts on the platform. Shortly after, Twitter sued Musk demanding that he follow through with the deal. Musk countersued alleging that the company had misrepresented its monetizable daily active users and that the real number was 65 million users lower than than what Twitter had provided.
