Elon Musk Sent Another Notice in an Attempt to End the Twitter Deal

 

Elon Musk has sent a third letter to Twitter seeking to block its $44 billion acquisition of the company. Musk's legal team cited Twitter's multimillion-dollar severance payment to former security chief and whistleblower Peter Zatko as a breach of the merger agreement and grounds for terminating the deal. The letter, dated Sept. 9, was sent to Twitter's chief legal officer, Vijay Gade, and was included in a filing Twitter made with the SEC on Friday (which you can read at the bottom of this article).

Last month, Zatko made headlines by accusing Twitter of misleading investors about the number of bots on the service, failing to delete user data, and poor security practices, among other things. are Musk jumped on the allegations, referring to him in his second termination letter, and subpoenaed Zatko to testify at trial. Zatko was to be deposed on Friday.

Elon Musk sent his first resignation letter in July, saying Twitter had misled him about the number of bots on its platform, and that the company wouldn't give him access to information he could use to make his own decisions. need of This is despite the fact that he was given access to the "firehose" API containing each tweet.

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter had agreed to pay Zatko about $7 million before he left the company, after he and the company lost months of salary negotiations. In respect of compensation. Musk's lawyers are giving him another reason why a deal to buy his social media company shouldn't go through. The purchase agreement prohibits Twitter from providing extraordinary severance or termination payments. According to the Journal, the settlement isn't particularly strange, given that Zatko was an executive who left the company, but Musk doesn't seem to agree. (The letter also notes that Musk didn't learn about the separation agreement until after Twitter filed it in court.)

Whether or not Musk is actually allowed to end the deal is a matter for a Delaware court after Twitter sued Musk in July for trying to renege on the deal. Chancellor Kathleen McCormick has already ruled that Musk will be allowed to use Zatko's allegations to support his case, and that there will be "limited" discovery of documents related to the whistleblower report. In August, Musk filed a second termination notice citing the original reports.

The trial is scheduled to begin on October 17. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.