SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter denied in a court filing that it had deprived its would-be acquirer, billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, of necessary information or misrepresented details about its business. Musk originally made those charges to justify his attempt to back out of a $44 billion deal to buy the social platform, which he later claimed was infested with much larger numbers of"spam bots" and fake accounts than Twitter had disclosed.
In an unexpected twist, Twitter was able to file its response to Musk before Musk's own counterclaims have surfaced in public. A judge ruled on Wednesday that Musk's counterclaim will be made public by Friday. "The Counterclaims are a made-for-litigation tale that is contradicted by the evidence and common sense," Twitter's response says."Musk invents representations Twitter never made and then tries to wield, selectively, the extensive confidential data Twitter provided him to conjure a breach of those purported representations."