Twitter Responds to Musk’s Claims, Calls Them ‘Excuses’

Twitter Responds to Musk’s Claims, Calls Them ‘Excuses’

Twitter denied in a court filing that it had deprived its would-be acquirer, billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, of necessary information or misrepresented details about its business.

Musk originally made those charges to justify his attempt to back out of a $44 billion deal to buy the social platform, which he later claimed was infested with much larger numbers of “spam bots” and fake accounts than Twitter had disclosed.

The fate of that acquisition, which Musk agreed to without taking the time to examine the details of Twitter’s business, now rests with a Delaware court where Twitter sued to force Musk to complete the deal. The case is scheduled to go to trial on October 17.

The court’s decision could ultimately determine the future of a social platform used daily by 238 million people around the globe — a small audience by the standards of Facebook and other major platforms, but one that include political leaders, major entertainers and experts on a variety of subjects. Until January 2021, it was also home to the then-US president, Donald Trump.

In an unexpected twist, Twitter was able to file its response to Musk before Musk's own counterclaims surfaced in public. A judge ruled on Wednesday