Elon Musk officially tries to bail on buying Twitter

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Musk is trying to pull out of the deal to buy the micro-blogging site. In a filing Friday afternoon, Musk's team claimed that he was backing out of the deal because of false and misleading statements made by the company.

For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has been seeking the data and information needed to make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on the platform. The information has been failed or refused by the social media site.

Since signing the agreement, Musk has been setting the stage to abandon the deal, claiming that he was misled about the prevalence of fake accounts on the platform. It is not clear if Musk can legally abandon his agreement because he isn't happy about the presence of fake accounts on the social networking site.

The social media company has gone to great lengths to comply with Musk. In June of this year, the company opened up access to its service so that Musk could receive and analyze every post. The company tries to assure the public that it has control over the internet. On Thursday, it told press that it was blocking over a million accounts a day, and in May its CEO wrote a long thread about how it decides how many of its users are bots.

It is incumbent on Musk to prove that he has violated the agreement by pulling out. The deal was worth more for shareholders than it was today, with the price rising to $54.20 per share. The party at fault will pay $1 billion as a break up fee.

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