Elon Musk sent a third letter to Twitter trying to terminate his account $44 billion acquisition of the company. Musk’s legal team cited the multi-million dollar severance payout on Twitter of former security chief and whistleblower Peter Zatko as a merger agreement violation and a reason to terminate the deal. The letter, dated September 9, was sent to Twitter’s chief legal officer Vijaya Jade, and is included in deposit Twitter was created with the SEC on Friday (which you can read at the bottom of this article).
Last month, ZATCO made headlines by Twitter accuses Misleading investors about the number of bots on the service, failures to delete user data, and poor security practices, among other things. Musk jumped on the accusations, citing them in his letter Second termination letter And the call zatko to testify in the case. Zatko was due to be deposed on Friday.
Send Elon Musk First termination letter in July, saying that Twitter misled him about the number of bots on its platform, and that the company would not give him access to the information he needed to make his own decisions. This despite the fact that it was Grant access to the Fire Hose API which contains each tweet.
Thursday , The Wall Street Journal mentioned That Twitter agreed to pay Zatko nearly $7 million before he left the company, in connection with the lost compensation after he and the company negotiated the payment for months. Musk’s lawyers cite this as another reason his deal to buy the social media company was not executed. The purchase agreement prohibits Twitter from providing any termination indemnities or unusual termination payments. according to magazineThe settlement isn’t particularly strange, given that Zatko was an executive who left the company, but Musk appears to disagree. (The letter also states that Musk did not know about the dismissal agreement until Twitter took it to court.)
Whether Musk is actually allowed to terminate the deal is up to a Delaware court after Twitter sued Musk in July over Trying to drop the deal. Chancellor Kathleen McCormick has Already judged That it would allow Musk to use Zatko’s allegations to support his case, and that there would be “limited” discovery of documents related to the whistleblower’s report. In August, Musk filed the second notice of termination, citing original reports.
trial Scheduled to start October 17. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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