How Bad Are Elon Musk's Latest Twitter Shenanigans?

[marmar]

(Slate) The Elon Musk–Twitter saga had seemed to have entered a quiet period over the last week or so—in court, anyway. But on Thursday, the Delaware Court of Chancery unsealed an Oct. 6 filing by Twitter’s lawyers alleging that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO is under federal investigation related to his attempted purchase of the social-media company. Twitter would like to see Musk’s correspondence with federal authorities. So would Slate’s Elon Musk Shenanigans Watch, which comes to you now in its inaugural edition. (Officially, that is. What has the past year of Elon Musk news been if not one big shenanigans watch??)

According to Twitter’s lawyers, Musk’s team has been playing “hide the ball” with the correspondence, claiming that the documents lie outside the scope of discovery in the suit. It then goes on to describe the company’s almost comically lengthy attempts to get those communications, which Musk’s lawyers still had not produced less than two weeks before the start of the trial that would determine whether Musk would be forced to buy the platform. This delay isn’t necessarily important, though it’s fun to imagine Musk’s very serious counsel coming up multiple new versions of the dog-ate-my-homework excuse. Let’s call this stuff shenanigans-adjacent.

What’s important is who might be investigating Musk and why. The Twitter filing isn’t clear on either, though it drops some clues. According to Reuters, “In late September, Musk’s attorneys provided a ‘privilege log’ identifying documents to be withheld from discovery. The log referenced drafts of a May 13 email to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a slide presentation to the Federal Trade Commission, Twitter said.”

But the existence of investigations by those agencies isn’t a revelation: The Wall Street Journal broke the news back in May. The SEC, for its part, found it suspicious that Musk was late making the required disclosures to the government when he amassed 5 percent of Twitter’s stock earlier this year. As Slate’s Alex Kirshner wrote at the time, the government had a “nearly airtight, mostly pointless case against Elon Musk.” The FTC was also investigating Musk’s initial purchases of Twitter shares—eventually he reached 9 percent—on antitrust grounds. It could be that there are other SEC or FTC investigations, or that some other agency is looking into Musk right now. ............(more)

https://slate.com/technology/2022/10/elon-musk-federal-investigation-twitter-shenanigans-watch.html