Elon Musk Subpoenas Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey for October Trial Over Botched Buyout
22:15 GMT 22.08.2022 (Updated: 12:57 GMT 14.04.2023)
© AP Photo / Jose Luis Magana
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Twitter and Elon Musk signed a deal in April for the industrialist to buy all of the social media company's shares for a total of $44 billion, which would have effectively turned it back into a private company. He pledged to implement sweeping changes to the site, but backed out of the deal in July.
Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey has been subpoenaed by Musk’s lawyers, along with several other leading Twitter figures, Bloomberg revealed on Monday.
The order demands a vast array of information, including “documents and communications reflecting, referring to, or relating to the impact or effect of false or spam accounts on Twitter’s business operations,” documents related to how Twitter uses monetizable daily active users (mDAU) as a “key metric.”
Notably, the subpoena seeks documents going back to January 1, 2019.
Former Twitter product chief Kayvon Beykpour and former head of revenue Bruce Falck have also received subpoenas, according to Engadget.
Twitter sued Musk last month for breaking the deal for him to buy the company for $44 billion, saying he refused to "honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his interest.”
The day the complaint was filed in a Delaware court, Musk tweeted a meme summarizing the irony of the situation, hinting he would try and make Twitter present in court the information about “spam bots” on its website that it previously refused to hand over.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2022
Getting rid of the bots and verifying all human users were among the changes Musk promised to make after taking over Twitter.
Dorsey hasn’t spoken about Musk’s claims regarding bots and fake accounts on the site, but he did describe the industrialist as “the singular solution I trust” who was “getting the company out of an impossible situation.”
Musk is the world’s richest man, valued at roughly $219 billion. He owns several major companies, including electric carmaker Tesla, commercial space flight firm SpaceX, and The Boring Company, an engineering enterprise.
The five-day trial is set to begin on October 17.
