Twitter says Elon Musk is under federal investigation over company buyout

Social media giant has said that Elon Musk, who is the owner of Tesla and a potential buyer of Twitter, is currently under investigation by federal authorities for his conduct in the $44 billion purchase of Twitter.

Twitter made this announcement in court; however, they did not go into the specifics of what Musk is being investigated for or which federal authorities are leading the investigation.

“Elon Musk is presently under investigation by federal authorities for his conduct in connection with the acquisition of Twitter. Through counsel, he has exchanged substantive correspondence with those authorities concerning their investigations. Twitter wants those documents because they bear upon key issues in this litigation,” the filing said.

Twitter sued Musk in July in an attempt to force his hand to close the deal, attorneys for Musk claimed, adding that Twitter had claimed “investigative privilege” when it refused to handover documents that had been requested by Musk’s legal team.

In late September, Musk’s legal team had provided a “privilege log” pinpointing document to be withheld, Twitter confirmed. The log referenced drafts of a May 13 email to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission along with aslide presentation to the Federal Trade Commission.

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

On October 6th the litigation was put on ice, as this was the day that Musk changed course and said he would complete the deal.

Musk now has a deadline of October 28th to complete the deal. If he fails to do this, the litigation trial against him will proceed in November.

Alex Spiro, who is an attorney for Musk, told Reuters that Twitter’s court filing was a “misdirection” and asserted: “It is Twitter’s executives that are under federal investigation.”