Musk must produce lists of people in Twitter trial

A court in the U.S. state of Delaware has granted Twitter’s request to provide Elon Musk with a list of proposed investors, as well as one of people who were privy to key issues regarding the acquisition.

Who was to fund the Twitter acquisition?

Presiding Judge Kathaleen McCormick has ordered Musk to submit a list of all those investors who were expected to contribute more than $7 billion to the Twitter acquisition. She rejected Musk’s objection that preparing such a list would involve a disproportionate amount of work – thus granting a demand by Twitter.

In addition, it has asked Musk to prepare a list that includes all those people who were aware of key issues in the acquisition or were involved in an advisory capacity. In doing so, it has also complied with a demand by Twitter. Twitter’s goal here is to find out whether Musk had already made appropriate comments to confidants before the official announcement that the takeover had been canceled.

When did Musk want to get out?

Behind this, in turn, is the consideration that Musk could have already decided well before the official announcement that he no longer wanted to buy Twitter – and that the officially stated reasons for the exit were pretextual. If this were the case, Musk could possibly be forced to fulfill the takeover agreement entered into with Twitter.

Ex-security chief incriminates Twitter

But Musk would also like to put himself in a good position with subpoenas in court. Central to this is likely to be the appearance of Twitter’s ex-head of security, Peiter Zatko. Zatko supports Musk’s argument that Twitter withheld information about fake accounts and bots, misleading Musk about the potential of the platform and the company, respectively. Zatko states that Twitter firstly had major problems protecting itself from hacker attacks and secondly lied about the percentage of bots on the platform.

The main hearing in the said case is scheduled for October 17, 2022. Twitter and Musk have sued each other.