A simple buyout offer by the richest man on the planet has now turned into big litigation. Elon Musk refuses to complete the deal, and Twitter tries to force him to do so. Musk tries to evade the deal by excuses like the number of bots, World War 3, and severance payment to the whistleblower. Twitter’s lawyers are now focusing on Musk’s private messages on Signal as a trump card in court. Lawyers for both sides appeared at Delaware’s Court of Chancery to defend their clients before the October trial. In this meeting, Twitter’s lawyers referred to Musk’s conversation with the head of his family office. The social network says Musk and Birchall were talking about Morgan Stanley and Marc Andreesen, and there was also “a conversation about EU regulatory approval” of the Twitter deal.
Twitter claims Musk has tried to destroy evidences
According to Twitter’s lawyers, Musk and Birchall denied using Signal. However, they could recover a screenshot from the conversation while the messages were set to delete automatically. Twitter’s lawyers also claim Musk had a conversation with Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, who was supposed to support the Twitter deal as a co-investor. The messages are seemingly missing, but lawyers say Musk wrote to Ellison saying “interesting times.” Lawyers for Twitter are now asking the court to punish Musk for withholding these messages. “We do think that the time has come for the court to issue a severe sanction,” lawyers noted. On the other hand, Musk’s lawyers deny using Signal and destroying evidence. “There actually is no evidence that we destroyed evidence,” one of Musk’s lawyers said. She even described Signal as a “nefarious device” and claimed Twitter executives also use this messaging app. According to the lawyer, “Signal is not some exotic mechanism, it’s very common in Silicon Valley to use this platform.”
