Twitter did not ask Musk to torch his notebook for documentation purposes, but instead instituted reimbursement under the statutory right of reimbursement for the work it did responding to requests from the FBI
The social media platform said in a court filing that Musk is being investigated by federal authorities for his acquisition of the social media platform.
The company’s court filing elsewhere accused Musk’s legal team of failing to produce draft communications with the Securities and Exchange Commission and a slide presentation to the Federal Trade Commission as part of the two sides’ ongoing litigation over whether Musk can walk away from the deal.
Musk first attempted to terminate the deal in July, alleging that Twitter violated their mutual purchase agreement by misrepresenting the number of spam and fake bot accounts on its platform. Twitter sued Musk to complete the acquisition, accusing the billionaire of using bots as a pretext to exit a deal that he developed buyer’s remorse over following a market decline.
Musk proposed to buy the company at the original price, even though he already had an agreement in place. The judge overseeing the dispute later in the week ruled to pause the legal proceedings until Oct. 28 following a request from Musk.
“Prior to the start of this program, Twitter chose not to collect under this statutory right of reimbursement for the time spent processing requests from the FBI,” said the email to Twitter’s then-deputy general counsel Jim Baker.
“Twitter did not ask Zatko to torch his own documents, much less demand that he do so,” Twitter’s filing read. “No one knew what information Zatko’s notebook contained and they didn’t know what it was.”
Shellenberger published a redacted email that showed that the Safety, Content and Law Enforcement division of Twitter instituted a reimbursement program for work it did responding to FBI information requests. The document indicated that Twitter had received $3.4 million in reimbursements at the time.
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But facts be damned in the world we now live in. Musk’s claim has absolutely saturated right-wing media. If you rely on Fox News, radio, or one of the online outlets that make up the constellation of right-wing media, you believe the biggest scandal since Watergate. On Tuesday, a sitting congressman stated that he wanted to stop funding the FBI over the story. And the poisoning of that information well is also confusing others, who hear the nonsense and aren’t sure what to believe.
Similar to Donald Trump, Musk and right-wing media continue to take relatively mundane procedures, such as a company receiving reimbursement for processing legal requests, and put them in the worst possible light, portraying them as nefarious.