Musk defends tweets that allegedly tanked Twitter stock before buyout
Elon Musk defended his conduct in federal court Thursday as former Twitter shareholders accused him of deliberately driving down the company’s stock price ahead of his 2022 purchase of the platform now known as X.
The case, which represents Twitter shareholders who sold the stock between May 13 and Oct. 4, 2022, revolves around allegations that Musk violated federal securities laws while taking a series of calculated steps to drive down the company’s stock price in an attempt to either blow up the deal or wrangle a lower sales price.
This includes Musk’s claims about the number of bots on Twitter. Taking the stand for the second day, Musk continued to double down on his assertion that Twitter had a much higher number of fake and spam accounts than the 5% it disclosed in regulatory filings.
The problem of bots and fake accounts on Twitter wasn’t new at the time Musk negotiated the deal. The company had paid $809.5 million in 2021 to settle claims it was overstating its growth rate and monthly user figures. Twitter also disclosed its bot estimates to the Securities and Exchange Commission for years, while also cautioning that its estimate might be too low.
Four years later, the case is revisiting a moment when the world’s richest s***poster appeared to negotiate a multibillion-dollar acquisition the same way most people argue in a replies section.