Twitter seeking documents related to federal investigation of Elon Musk

Twitter said in a court filing released on Thursday that it’s trying to obtain documents from Elon Musk related to a federal investigation into the Tesla CEO’s $44 billion bid for the company.

Lawyers representing Twitter said the company first asked for the materials related to the investigation on July 22, and that Musk’s legal team has failed to comply, citing “investigative privilege,” according to the filing.

“Elon Musk is presently under investigation by federal authorities for his conduct in connection with the acquisition of Twitter,” the lawyers wrote. “Through counsel, he has exchanged substantive correspondence with those authorities concerning their investigations.”

Twitter’s lawyers said the documents “bear upon key issues in this litigation.”

Musk initially agreed to buy Twitter in April, before then trying to pull out of the deal claiming that the company hadn’t been transparent about the number of bots and fake accounts on the platform. Twitter sued Musk in July to try and force him to close the deal. The two sides were scheduled to go to trial in Delaware Chancery Court on Oct. 17, but last week Musk reversed course again and said he would purchase Twitter at the agreed up on price of $54.20 a share.

A judge from the court ruled last Thursday that Musk has until Oct. 28 to close the acquisition if he wants to avoid a trial.

In the meantime, Twitter is still pursuing information. The latest filing refers to a letter the Securities and Exchange Commission sent to Musk in June. The SEC was seeking information related to a tweet Musk posted in May, indicating that the “deal cannot move forward” until the company provides him with more information about spam and fraud accounts on the platform.

Twitter’s attorneys said producing the documents would “create no real burden, because they are a discrete set of easily identifiable materials within the files of the attorneys who wrote, reviewed, or received them.”

“This game of ‘hide the ball’ must end,” the lawyers wrote.

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