Twitter’s legal battle against Elon Musk has at least the merit of revealing some crisp information on what really happened behind the scenes, away from the cameras. The deep reasons why Elon Musk really wanted to buy Twitter, before backtracking, remain a little unclear for the time being – the epilogue of this legal component (probably at the end of October) should shed some real light on the matter. . But already, over the course of the hearings, lawyers for both parties cite exchanges with fascinating content.
We owe the latest revelation to Twitter lawyers. Months before the entrepreneur began to give signs that he was going to try to derail the takeover, Elon Musk reportedly asked his advisor at Morgan Stanley on May 8 “to go slower” on the takeover of Twitter at $44 billion. A remark directly related to the Russian invasion in Ukraine which had just begun. The entrepreneur then supported his remark by quoting the speech that Vladimir Putin was to deliver on May 9, and which he was able to consult in advance.
Is the fear of a 3rd World War the real reason for the aborted takeover of Twitter?
In this speech, the Russian president was to explain that the decision to intervene in Ukraine in February was “the only right decision” while claiming that the west “was preparing to invade Russia”. Elon Musk explains in the rest of the exchange: “let’s just slow down for a few days […] Putin’s speech tomorrow is really important. It doesn’t make much sense to buy Twitter if we’re heading into WWIII”
A few weeks later, in July, the entrepreneur formally announced its intention to withdraw from the takeover agreement. Claiming a disagreement on the number of accounts linked to spam. Twitter lawyers are also presenting the revelations of a former Twitter executive Pieter Zatko, cited by the defense to better disparage Twitter’s internet strategy, as a kind of plan B in case the argument of too high a proportion of dummy accounts does not work.
We note, however, that Pieter Zatko’s statements seem to really disturb the line of defense of the social network, which thus prefers to attack the form rather than the content of the testimony – presumably so as not to weaken its position. The former executive has indeed affirmed under oath before Congress that internally, Twitter has, on several occasions, had inadequate management of several aspects of the security of its data.
Read also – Who is Peiter Zatko, the hacker who could bring down Twitter?
This could potentially discredit part of the prosecution’s arguments. One of Elon Musk’s lawyers reacted strongly to the publication of the private conversation between the entrepreneur and his banker, to better show that the quote is incomplete and misleading: “the presentation of this excerpt makes absolutely no sense, as the full transcript of the conversation shows” says the lawyer.
