The Twitter v. Elon trial pregame heats up

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

This week in the area.

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Mergers and acquisitions are not marriages and affairs this week.

The Delaware Court of Chancery gave Musk an unfavorably quick schedule last month, and now we know the trial will take place from October 17th to October 21st. Two and a half months is how long it will take for both parties to fight over what evidence they will get to introduce.

The Washington Post and The Chancery Daily reported earlier this week that there had been subpoenas issued to Musk. The organizers of the All-In Summit requested information from high-profile deal participants, including Musk, as well as from high-profile deal participants.

The targets aren't too happy about this. David Sacks responded with a picture of a Mad magazine cover with a middle finger, after Joe Lonsdale called it a "Giant harassing fishing expedition."

It's funny that so much of this drama is taking place on a platform that Musk is portraying as hopelessly broken.

Musk did a lot of work recruiting people to make the deal happen, and that could come back to haunt him in court. The company poked through Musk's extensive Silicon Valley Rolodex for statements that contradict his dire claims about bots or indications that he might be more upset about other things.

Musk associates had their own vested interest in the deal, for instance, All-In Summit co-organizer Jason Calacanis had been soliciting investors who could back Musk.

That is just one part of the information-seeking campaign. More than a dozen banks and several investment firms are on the full list of subpoenas. Musk sold the stock he used to finance the acquisition of the company.

For his part, Musk enlisted the services of several companies to back up his claims of fraud.

It wasn't immediately clear how busy Musk's lawyers were. He filed a countersuit against the social networking site. It has been under wraps for several days while both parties fight over when to reveal it.

Musk sent over a copy late last week and then tried to unseal it early, according to the company. Musk's countersuit refers "extensively to internal Twitter information and data" and it's asked for time to make redactions.

According to Musk's attorney, nothing in the suit is confidential and that the side of the story it doesn't want publicly disclosed should not be allowed to be revealed. The company was given until Friday afternoon to make a proposal.

Since publication, the lawsuit and response have been made public.

As a result of his acquisition, Musk had access to a lot of data from the micro-blogging site. There is a lot of information he could throw into a countersuit, where he will likely try to make his case that there was a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts.

It is not certain that Musk will make a persuasive version of this case. He has had a lot of chances to blow up a bombshell that would reveal fraud.

Tech companies know that if an audience is granted access to a lot of data, they will find things that are not good. It is an extension of Masnick's Impossibility Theorem, which states that moderation at scale is impossible. Musk might be more than willing to attack it if he can't have it on his terms.

There is a struggle with fake or duplicate accounts on the social networking site. Some details from its application programming interface may show that. It's not clear how well Musk could frame this as being full of bots or other bad stuff, not just to the court but also to the public. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton got involved with his own investigation earlier this year.

In a worst-case scenario, Musk would be able to dig up information that would lead to new demands from regulators. In a weird case, he digs up something damaging on the social networking site, but loses the case and has to tangle with the regulators.

Making it look bad doesn't necessarily get Musk out of the deal, and he acquired the company partly because he wanted to get rid of the bots. The public record is a great place to learn things that companies don't want you to know, and Musk could decide to use it as a weapon in the trial.

pic.twitter.com/RmXlZHKEKc

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 1, 2022

It has been a relatively quiet week for Musk. Some debris from the rocket may have crashed on a farm in Australia. His father wishes people would give the rest of the Musk family more air time. There is an adorable Shiba Inu video he posted. We hope that they will be subpoenaed as well.