Elon Musk is Under Federal Investigation Over Twitter Deal

The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk is being investigated by Federal authorities regarding his conduct around his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. 

That’s according to a recent filing from Twitter, which seeks to unearth critical documents that Musk is supposedly withholding from the firm. 

Musk’s Documents

As reported by Reuters, it is still unclear what exactly the probe is focused on, or which federal authorities are conducting the investigation. 

However, Twitter claimed that Musk refused to hand over documents the company wanted in September, citing “investigative privilege.” Specifically, Musk’s attorneys provided a “privilege log” of documents that were not to be shared, including a draft email to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in May, and a slide show presentation for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). 

The SEC did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment, while the FTC declined to comment. 

“This game of ‘hide the ball’ must end,” said Twitter in the court filing.

The filing called on Kathaleen McCormick, a Delaware judge, to issue an order for Musk’s attorneys to provide said documents. It was filed on October, 6th, just as the same judge paused litigation between Musk and Twitter after the former decided again to follow through on the deal. 

Alex Spiro, an attorney for Musk, claimed that Twitter’s filing is merely misdirecting the crowd. “It is Twitter’s executives that are under federal investigation,” he asserted. When asked, Twitter did not comment on Spiro’s response. 

McCormick has given Musk until October 28th to close the Twitter acquisition, or else a trial date will be set the following month. 

Musk’s Twitter Flip Flop

After publicly disclosing a 9% stake in Twitter in April, Musk quickly moved to purchase the entire company later that month after declining a seat on its Board of Directors. Though Twitter accepted, Musk ultimately tried to back out of the deal allegedly due to Twitter providing insufficient information about the spam bots on its platform. 

Twitter responded by suing Musk to follow through on the deal, which he has once again agreed to take on. 

Besides spam bots, Musk has also shown interest in making Twitter a haven of free speech, and in making it more decentralized. The billionaire contacted numerous crypto industry leaders in March including Jack Dorsey and Sam Bankman-Fried to discuss how this might be possible.