Musk’s Lawyers to Make Case for Whistleblower Complaint to Be Added to Lawsuit

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Elon Musk’s lawyers on Tuesday are set to make their case to amend the billionaire’s counterclaims against Twitter to include allegations from the social media company”s former head of security, Peter Zatko.

Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the chief judge of the Delaware Chancery Court, in a filing Friday set a 1:30 p.m. ET start time on Tuesday to virtually hear arguments related to a handful of pending motions. They’ll begin with motions related to discovery, followed by Musk’s motion to amend. Each side will get 90 minutes, which can be allocated among the pending motions, McCormick said.

Twitter

(ticker: TWTR) is asking the Delaware Chancery Court to order Musk to follow through on his deal to acquire the company for $44 billion. Musk, the chief executive of

Tesla

(TSLA), has sought to terminate the agreement. He has alleged the company’s disclosures about monetizable daily active users undercount the prevalence of spam bots on the service. Twitter has denied that claim.

After The Washington Post and CNN reported last month on a whistleblower complaint filed by Zatko that alleged Twitter deceived its board and regulators about its vulnerability to hackers and its efforts to fight spam, Musk sent Twitter another termination letter and filed to amend his counterclaims.

Twitter’s lawyers replied to Musk’s letter, arguing the purported termination was invalid, adding it “is based solely on statements made by a third party that, as Twitter has previously stated, are riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lack important context.”

Though the trial is set to begin Oct. 18, Musk’s lawyers have asked the judge for a delay to November. Twitter stock closed Friday at $38.63, which is a $15.57 discount to Musk’s $54.20 offer. That implies skepticism from Wall Street that the deal goes through at the original offer price.

Write to Connor Smith at [email protected]