Musk Appears in Court to Face Market Manipulation Charges During Twitter Acquisition

BlockBeats News, March 5th, according to the Financial Times, Musk admitted that in the multibillion-dollar lawsuit surrounding his $44 billion acquisition bid for Twitter, he said the tweet he posted "might not have been my most wise behavior," while the world's richest man is defending himself in court against market manipulation charges.

Speaking to a San Francisco jury on Wednesday, he said the tweet was not intended to manipulate Twitter's stock price and was made during the negotiation period for the acquisition.

A group of Twitter investors claimed that they suffered losses after Musk threatened to withdraw from the deal to gain leverage in the acquisition talks, even though Musk knew he was legally obligated to complete the $44 billion acquisition.

After signing a binding acquisition agreement in April 2022 and waiving the right to conduct due diligence, Musk quickly began to question the number of bot accounts on the platform. On May 13, 2022, he tweeted that unless the company could prove that "spam/fake accounts are indeed less than 5% of the user base," trading would be "paused temporarily." The next day, Twitter's stock price fell by 9% at the opening.