Twitter cries ‘excuses’ to Musk’s claims

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter denied in a court filing that it had deprived its would-be acquirer, billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, of necessary information or misrepresented details about its business. Musk originally made those charges to justify his attempt to back out of a $44 billion deal to buy the social platform, which he later claimed was infested with much larger numbers of “spam bots” and fake accounts than Twitter had disclosed.

That fate of that acquisition, which Musk agreed to without taking the time to examine the details of Twitter’s business, now rests with a Delaware court where Twitter sued to force Musk to complete the deal. The case is scheduled to go to trial on October 17.

In an unexpected twist, Twitter was able to file its response to Musk before Musk’s own counterclaims have surfaced in public. A judge ruled on Wednesday that Musk’s counterclaim will be made public by Friday.

Parts of Musk’s counterclaim, however, was included in Twitter’s response. These include accusing the company of fraud and “delay tactics” and only providing Musk “sanitized, incomplete information” in answer to his questions about spam accounts and other company metrics. While Twitter has claimed that Musk is inventing reasons to get out of buying the company, Musk’s lawyers say that Twitter is the one holding back the deal by “dragging its feet” and providing insufficient data to the billionaire’s requests.

In a reply filed Thursday in Delaware Chancery Court, Twitter calls Musk’s reasoning “a story, imagined in an effort to escape a merger agreement that Musk no longer found attractive.”