A recent court filing from Twitter has shown that Tesla CEO Elon Musk was texting Oracle Corporation co-founder Larry Ellison just hours before he announced that he was pausing his attempt to acquire the social media company.
As per Twitter’s court filing, Musk and Ellison had exchanged multiple text messages starting May 12 through 12:20 a.m. on May 13. This was just a few hours before Musk announced on Twitter that he was putting his acquisition efforts on hold due to his concerns about the platform’s fake and spam accounts.
Twitter’s legal team has complained about Musk’s camp, stating that the Tesla CEO has not really provided the relevant text messages between Musk and Ellison. This was despite the fact that Twitter subpoenaed Musk’s messages about his attempted acquisition of the social media platform, according to Insider.
It was not just Musk’s messages to Ellison that seemed to be giving Twitter’s legal team headaches. Twitter’s lawyers have also accused Musk of “destruction of evidence,” citing a screenshot of a conversation between Musk and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen on Signal, a messaging app that includes a feature that deletes messages after some time.
“Musk deleted these messages because he anticipated litigation and he knew that they would undermine his counterclaims and defenses,” Twitter’s lawyers claimed.
Both Ellison and Andreessen have backed Musk’s attempt to acquire Twitter. Andreessen’s VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz, backed Musk with $400 million, while Ellison was one of 19 investors who committed a whopping $7.14 billion for the potential acquisition.
Musk noted that he walked away from his attempt to acquire Twitter because the social media company misrepresented the number of fake and spam accounts on the platform. Twitter, on the other hand, has argued that Musk should be forced to complete his buyout of the company for $44 billion, or $54.20 per share.
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