Elon Musk Testifies in Court Over Market Manipulation Lawsuit During Twitter Acquisition

BlockBeats News, March 5 — According to the Financial Times of the UK, Elon Musk admitted that the tweet he posted “may not have been my wisest move” amid the billion-dollar lawsuit over his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. The world’s richest man is also defending himself in court against market manipulation charges.

On Wednesday, he told a San Francisco jury that the tweet was not intended to manipulate Twitter’s stock price, which was during acquisition negotiations.

A group of Twitter investors claim they suffered losses after Musk threatened to withdraw from the deal to gain leverage in negotiations, despite knowing he was legally obligated to complete the $44 billion purchase.

After signing a binding acquisition agreement in April 2022 and waiving the right to due diligence, Musk quickly began questioning the number of bot accounts on the platform. On May 13, 2022, he tweeted that the deal was “temporarily on hold” unless the company could prove that “spam/fake accounts indeed account for less than 5% of users.” On that day, Twitter’s stock price dropped 9% at market open.