Musk's countersuit against Twitter says he and Wall Street were misled: report
The trading of lawsuits comes ahead of a scheduled trial set for October in a Delaware court
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Details of Elon Musk's countersuit against Twitter are being reported ahead of Friday's official release by a judge.
Musk's 164-page countersuit is full of accusations around the validity of the social media company's business claims, according to a copy obtained by Insider.
It is the latest chapter in the saga between the billionaire CEO of Tesla and Twitter since Musk announced his intention to pull out of a $44 billion agreement to buy the social media site.
Elon Musk illustration with Twitter logo seen displayed on a smartphone screen. (Photo Illustration by Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images / Getty Images)
The countersuit is another escalation of the ongoing legal fight over Musk's attempt to back out of the deal.
ELON MUSK'S ANSWER TO TWITTER LAWSUIT TO BE MADE PUBLIC BY FRIDAY
The two sides are already scheduled to face off in an October trial in a Delaware court over whether he is legally able to walk away from the deal.
A sign is pictured outside the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jed Jacobsohn / AP Newsroom)
Musk argues that he is entitled to drop the deal entirely, claiming he was led to believe through Twitter's public assurances to investors that its business, built around user metrics, was sound.
Musk claims they are far from it.
MUSK REACTS TO TWITTER BLAME FOR SECOND-QUARTER REVENUE MISS
After pushing for more information from Twitter about how many bots or spam accounts were on the platform, Musk decided to call off the deal in July.
Musk is accusing the company of intentionally "miscounting" the number of spam accounts it hosts in order to juice its user metrics "as part of its scheme to mislead investors about the company's prospects."
Elon Musk, left, and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. (Reuters | Twitter / Reuters Photos)
He also claims that Twitter's reliance on the metric mDAU, or monetizable daily active Twitter users, as a basis of revenue is misleading in and of itself.
TWITTER-ELON MUSK TRIAL TO START IN OCTOBER
Twitter replied in a filing on Thursday in Delaware Chancery Court, calling Musk’s reasoning "a story, imagined in an effort to escape a merger agreement that Musk no longer found attractive."
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TWTR | NO DATA AVAILABLE | - | - | - |
| TSLA | TESLA INC. | 342.81 | +0.79 | +0.23% |
"The Counterclaims are a made-for-litigation tale that is contradicted by the evidence and common sense," Twitter's response says. "Musk invents representations Twitter never made and then tries to wield, selectively, the extensive confidential data Twitter provided him to conjure a breach of those purported representations," according to The Associated Press.
Musk's counterclaims were initially not available to the public because they allegedly contained private company information that needed to be redacted, according to arguments from Twitter's lawyers.
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The judge overseeing the case in Delaware Chancery Court said the suit needed to be made public by Friday.