Elon Musk’s move to buy Twitter appears to be over.
But the legal drama is not.
And Musk is just getting started with his war against Twitter.
Elon Musk turned heads when he made an offer to buy Twitter at a premium for $44 billion and take the company private.
His stated goal was to restore Twitter as a free speech platform.
But the deal hit a speed bump when Musk claimed that Twitter was being cagy about the number of fake accounts on the platform.
Twitter said the number was around 5%, but Musk claimed the number could be as high as 20%.
The dispute over bot accounts caused Musk to back out of the deal, and Twitter sued in an effort to force the deal to be consummated.
Now, Musk plans to counter-sue the social media giant.
The New York Post reported that “Musk’s lawyers are angling to push a Delaware Court of Chancery judge to grant them more time and power to gather information about bots on Twitter, sources close to the situation said. A protracted legal battle could also potentially drag down the company’s stock, giving Musk more leverage to renegotiate Twitter’s sale price. The news comes less than a week after Twitter sued Musk in Delaware, accusing the mogul of agreeing to buy the site then attempting to ‘trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away.’ Musk has 20 days from last Tuesday, when Twitter’s suit was filed, to file his own counterclaims.”
It’s unclear what Musk’s motives are at this point.
His purported mission of making free speech great again on Twitter rankled the Left, triggering endless hit pieces and efforts to get the deal killed via federal regulation.
The most bombastic blue-checkmark leftists on Twitter even analogized Musk’s purchase of Twitter to late Weimar Germany before the rise of the Nazis.
That’s how much leftists hate free speech.
However, some believe Musk’s pursuit of Twitter was simply a ruse to sell off Tesla stock without tanking the stock price.
Musk was able to liquidate $8.5 billion in Tesla shares, a sell-off that normally would spark panic in the market.
There was a $1 billion cancellation fee in the Twitter agreement, but legal scholars argue that Musk may not even have to pay that.
A Delaware Court of Chancery judge, chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, has ordered an October trial date for the lawsuit.
Regardless of the outcome, Musk is likely in a good spot.
He either gains control of Twitter, or he walks away with at least $7.5 billion in cash.
Stay tuned to Unmuzzled News for any updates to this ongoing story.
