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A court filing released on Wednesday revealed that a Delaware court has denied Elon Musk’s request to delay the trial over his attempt to pull out of the Twitter buyout deal.
According to CNBC, the court ruled that Musk will be able to add claims from a Twitter whistleblower to his countersuit against the social media platform.
The trial is set to begin on October 17, but Musk’s team had requested a mid-November start date.
I previously rejected Defendants’ arguments in response to Twitter’s motion to expedite, making clear that the longer the delay until trial, the greater the risk of irreparable harm to Twitter,” Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick wrote. “I am convinced that even four weeks’ delay would risk further harm to Twitter too great to justify.”
Musk’s lawyers had requested to add in claims related to a complaint from whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko.
Musk’s legal team argued that the claims Zatko made in regards to privacy, security, and content moderation are “extreme, egregious deficiencies by Twitter.”
Zatko claims that Twitter took little-to-no action to stop foreign governments that were trying to “infiltrate, control, exploit, surveil and/or censor the company’s platform, staff, and operations.”
Zatko is set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 13.
Truth Tent reported:
After Zatko’s claims were made public, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal sent a memo to employees that stated that they were still reviewing the complaint, but added that is a false narrative that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and presented without important context.”
According to CNBC, McCormick said Musk’s legal team would be allowed to only “incremental discovery” based on the new allegations, including “targeted document discovery and minimal additional experts and fact witnesses.”
“We are hopeful that winning the motion to amend takes us one step closer to the truth coming out in that courtroom,” said Musk lawyer Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel in a statement.
“We look forward to presenting our case in Court beginning on October 17th and intend to close the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement.
In July, Musk ended his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. But, the deal had been put on hold since May after Musk demanded to see that less than five percent of users on Twitter are bot accounts.
Musk first announced that he wanted to purchase Twitter in April of this year. Before he offered to buy it, he bought a 9.2% stake in the company. Musk did not like how Twitter was being run and the censorship happening on the social media platform.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said.
