The billionaire Tesla CEO reached a deal to buy Twitter and take it private in April 2022. On May 13, however, he declared his plan \u201ctemporarily on hold\u201d and said he needs to pinpoint the number of spam and fake accounts on the platform. Twitter\u2019s stock tumbled as a result. A few days later, he tweeted that the deal \u201ccannot go forward\u201d and claimed that almost 20% of Twitter accounts were \u201cfake,\u201d according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
The plaintiff\u2019s lawyer began with questioning Musk about his tweets \u2014 or lack of tweets \u2014 about his decision to buy Twitter and his purchases of Twitter stock prior to deciding to take the company private.<\/p>\n
Wearing a black suit and tie, Musk said he didn\u2019t think it was \u201cmaterial\u201d when, in early 2022, he began amassing Twitter stock and did not tweet about it or disclose to the Securities and Exchange Commission. He said he\u2019s bought stock in \u201cmany companies\u201d and did not post about it.<\/p>\n
Once he did, Twitter\u2019s stock jumped 27% in one day.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat sounds high,\u201d Musk said.<\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s May 13 tweet \u2014 \u201cTwitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam\/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users\u201d \u2014 was \u201cfalse because the buyout was not, in fact, \u2018temporarily on hold,\u2019\u201d the lawsuit says. That\u2019s because Twitter did not agree to put the deal on hold, and there was nothing in the merger agreement the two parties signed that allowed Musk to put it on hold, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
In the following weeks, Musk continued to try to delay or get out of the deal, which the lawsuit claims he did in the form of false, disparaging statements about Twitter\u2019s business that drove the San Francisco company\u2019s stock down sharply.<\/p>\n
In July 2022, Musk doubled down on the bots issue and said he would\u00a0abandon his offer to buy Twitter<\/a>\u00a0after the company failed to provide enough information about the number of fake accounts. That\u2019s even though the lawsuit notes that Musk waived due diligence for his \u201ctake it or leave it\u201d offer to buy Twitter. That means he waived his right to look at the company\u2019s nonpublic finances.<\/p>\n The stock closed at $36.81 on July 8, when Musk tweeted he was abandoning the deal over the fake accounts issue. That\u2019s 32% below Musk\u2019s offer price of $54.20 per share.<\/p>\n Elon Musk, center rear, arrives for a Twitter shareholder trial at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Wednesday, March 4, 2026, in San Francisco. (AP Photo\/Godofredo A. V\u00e1squez)\n<\/p>\n Elon Musk, left, arrives for a Twitter shareholder trial at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Wednesday, March 4, 2026, in San Francisco. (AP Photo\/Godofredo A. V\u00e1squez)\n<\/p>\n Elon Musk, center, arrives for a Twitter shareholder trial at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, on Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo\/Godofredo A. V\u00e1squez)\n<\/p>\n Elon Musk, center, arrives for a Twitter shareholder trial at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Wednesday, March 4, 2026, in San Francisco. (AP Photo\/Godofredo A. V\u00e1squez)\n<\/p>\n FILE \u2013 Elon Musk attends the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo\/Markus Schreiber, File)\n<\/p>\n Show Caption<\/p>\n 1 of 5<\/p>\n Elon Musk, center rear, arrives for a Twitter shareholder trial at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Wednesday, March 4, 2026, in San Francisco. (AP Photo\/Godofredo A. V\u00e1squez)\n<\/p>\n Expand<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cTo try to renegotiate the price or delay the merger, Musk made materially false and misleading statements and omissions, and engaged in a scheme to deceive the market, all in violation of the law,\u201d the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n The problem of\u00a0bots and fake accounts on Twitter<\/a>\u00a0wasn\u2019t new. The company had paid $809.5 million in 2021 to settle claims it was overstating its growth rate and monthly user figures. Twitter also disclosed its bot estimates to the Securities and Exchange Commission for years, while also cautioning that its estimate might be too low.<\/p>\n Twitter sued Musk to force him to complete the deal, and Musk countersued. On Oct. 4, Musk offered\u00a0to go through with his original proposal<\/a>\u00a0to buy Twitter for $44 billion, which Twitter accepted. The deal closed later that month. In the ensuing months, Musk slashed the company\u2019s workforce, gutted its trust and safety team and rolled back content moderation policies. In July 2023, he renamed Twitter as X.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the first time that Musk has been dragged into court to defend himself against allegations of duping investors with his social media posts. Three years ago, Musk spent about eight hours\u00a0testifying in a San Francisco federal trial<\/a>\u00a0about his plans to buy Tesla \u2014 the electric automaker that he still runs as publicly traded company \u2014 for $420 per share in a proposed 2018 deal that never materialized. A nine-member jury\u00a0absolved Musk of wrongdoing<\/a>\u00a0in that case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By BARBARA ORTUTAY and MICHAEL LIEDTKE SAN FRANCISCO (AP) \u2014 Elon Musk took the stand in a shareholder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1611,94590,74,76,75,2831],"class_list":["post-204266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-elon-musk","tag-misleading-social-media-posts","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Elon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AP26063628507559.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Elon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AP26063628507543.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"Elon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AP26063620756821.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"Elon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AP26063628508131.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"FILE](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Musk_Twitter_Shareholders_42732-1.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n