Musk confidentially countersues Twitter over nixed acquisition bid: reports

Tesla CEO Elon Musk confidentially filed a countersuit against Twitter after the company sued him for terminating a deal to buy the social media platform for $44 billion earlier this month, according to multiple news reports.

The Friday countersuit was not made publicly available. A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment to The Hill on the development.

The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that Musk is expected to counterclaim that the number of monetizable daily active users was changed by Twitter before the deal was expected to go through.

In addition, the Journal reported Musk will likely claim that Twitter did not respond when the SpaceX CEO’s team made inquiries on spam number data that the team claimed were not sufficiently answered by the social media company.

Musk’s counsel argued that Twitter violated their agreement on several counts, including that the social media company had fired two executives and therefore went against their agreement, Twitter did not share adequate information regarding bots on Twitter’s platform and that the company has made incorrect statements regarding bots on its site.

Days after Musk terminated the deal, the social media company filed a lawsuit against the billionaire.

“These claims are pretexts and lack any merit,” Twitter’s lawsuit claimed. “Musk, by contrast, has been acting against this deal since the market started turning, and has breached the merger agreement repeatedly in the process.”

The five day trial between the two will start beginning Oct. 17.