Twitter has accused Elon Musk of creating a “new set of excuses” to avoid honoring its $44 billion deal to buy the social media company, calling its recently filed objections “implausible and contradicting the facts.”
After Twitter sued Musk last month to push through the deal, Musk filed a countersuit last week trying to block the company’s social media efforts, which is still under seal. A judge ordered his release on Friday.
Twitter released its rebuttals to the Tesla CEO’s lawsuit Thursday in a lawsuit shared by Brett Taylor, the social media group’s board chairman.
In his counterclaim, Musk again argued that Twitter breached the agreement by significantly understating the share of spam and bots on its platform. The billionaire’s own analysis estimated that the number of bot or spam accounts is at least 10 percent of all users. Twitter previously estimated that bots made up less than 5 percent of accounts.
Musk also claimed that Twitter overestimated how many of its users could be monetized, claiming that the number of users who actually saw an ad on the service was “about 65 million lower” than the company represented in the regulatory documents. Musk claimed that only about 16 million users saw “the vast majority” of the ads.
Twitter responded by calling Musk’s assessments “factually inaccurate, legally deficient and commercially inappropriate.”
It says the methodology behind Musk’s estimates is “untenable on its face” and “doesn’t measure the same as Twitter or even use the same data as Twitter.”
The company questioned the veracity of Musk’s data, claiming that a tool allegedly used to analyze the data flagged the billionaire’s account as a “probable bot.”
Twitter concluded: “Musk’s counterclaims based on distortion, misrepresentation and outright fraud change nothing.”
In addition to the documents, both sides are casting a wide net in search of additional information about the wording of the deal.
Musk has subpoenaed Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase for details on how they advised Twitter, demanding any documents detailing financial results, discussions with the company about the deal and any analysis of its valuation.
Meanwhile, Twitter sent out requests for information to the banks involved in Musk’s financing of the deal, as well as to co-investors and others in the billionaire’s orbit.
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As the Twitter spat escalates and heads toward a speedy Oct. 17 court date, Musk is also grappling with questions from Tesla fans and shareholders about his role as CEO of the electric car maker.
On Thursday, at Tesla’s annual meeting, Musk answered several questions related to the Twitter controversy and said he had “a good sense of where to direct the engineering team at Twitter to make it radically better.”
Asked what would happen to Tesla if he left or split his time, Musk said: “I think Tesla will continue to do very well even if I get abducted by aliens or go back to my home planet.”
Additional reporting by Richard Waters in San Francisco
Video: Elon Musk talks to FT about Twitter, Tesla and Trump
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