Elon Musk Subpoenas Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey

The preparation for the courtroom showdown between Twitter and former suitor Elon Musk continues, with the news of another legal development.

Elon Musk and his legal team have subpoenaed former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, in an effort to gather a wide range of information from the co-founder, who stepped down from the CEO role in November, but remained on the Twitter board until late May.

Jack Dorsey has publicly supported Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover attempt of Twitter in April and has also criticised Twitter’s board of directors, despite vocal concerns from staff and users about Musk’s acquisition.

Dorsey subpoena

Dorsey has reasons not to be overly friendly to Twitter’s board of directors after clashing with it over the years.

And previously some Twitter shareholders actively sought Dorsey’s removal during his second tenure as CEO.

CNN, citing court filings made public on Monday, reported that Musk’s legal team is asking Dorsey for all documents and communications regarding the merger agreement as well as those “reflecting, referring to, or relating to the impact or effect of false or spam accounts on Twitter’s business and operations.”

As part of the subpoena, Musk’s legal team is also seeking documents and communications related to Twitter’s use of monetizable daily active users (mDAU) “as a ‘Key Metric,’ as noted in Twitter’s SEC filings.”

Legal fight

Twitter is suing Musk over his attempt to terminate his agreed $44 billion deal to acquire the social media platform.

Elon Musk in turn filed a countersuit against Twitter, alleging he was “hoodwinked” into signing the deal to buy the social media company.

But the platform has said that Musk’s counterclaims are “factually inaccurate, legally insufficient, and commercially irrelevant.”

Spam issue

Twitter had in April this year said that less than 5 percent of Twitter users are spam or fake accounts.

Musk however believes the true figure of fake or bot accounts is closer to 20 percent or more.

Twitter has previously said it suspends more than 1 million spam accounts a day – up from it when CEO Parag Agrawal, said in May that spam account suspensions were running at 500,000 a day.

Twitter also has a specialist team and automated processes dedicated to weeding out fake accounts, and in June it began providing access for Musk to the colossal firehose of public tweet data.

But Musk has not satisfied and pulled out of the agreement, alleging Twitter had withheld information about those bot accounts.

Twitter recently has been subpoenaing banks and financial institutions, seeking information about what lenders, investors and advisers were saying to each other about Musk’s behaviour after he signed the deal in late April.

The legal team of Elon Musk meanwhile has demanded that Twitter turn over the names of its staff, responsible for calculating what percentage of users are bot or spam accounts.

The two sides are set to appear in a Delaware Court of Chancery on 17 October.