Elon Musk under federal investigation, reveals latest Twitter court filing

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is being investigated by the US federal authorities in connection with his USD 44 billion Twitter buyout deal, said media reports, citing a court filing by the microblogging site. 

However, the Thursday Twitter court filing did not go into details of the ongoing probe as to what actions taken by the business magnate are being investigated by the officials. In the court filing, Twitter, without delving into details of the matter, simply said that they are looking into Musk’s “conduct” linked to the deal. The main focus seems to be on Musk’s legal team. 

Twitter accused Musk’s legal team of failing to produce draught communications with the Securities and Exchange Commission and a slide presentation to the Federal Trade Commission. This is part of the two sides’ ongoing litigation over whether Musk can walk away from the deal.

Reacting to the Twitter filing, Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro said that the filing only aims to digress from its own legal issues, which came to the surface through whistleblower disclosure. Peiter Zatko, the former Twitter security chief, accused Twitter of wrongdoing last month, including “Twitter’s tracking and measurement of user engagement.” 

“Twitter’s executives are under federal investigation,” Spiro said in a statement “. This misdirection was sent by Twitter to try and uncover which of their assorted misconduct they are under investigation for.” 

In July, in a surprising turn of events, Elon Musk, who had long been showing his interest in buying Twitter, terminated the deal. The Tesla CEO did so by alleging that Twitter violated their mutual purchase agreement by misrepresenting the number of spam and fake bot accounts on its platform.

After Musk put out the deal termination announcement, the market saw a sharp decline. Later, Twitter sued Musk accusing him of using bots as a pretext to exit a deal.