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(LifeSiteNews) — Tech billionaire Elon Musk filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday to inform Twitter he no longer intends to purchase the company.
In the documents, the pro-free speech Tesla founder told Twitter he is canceling his $44 billion offer to buy the social media giant because he says the company misrepresented the number of spam accounts and fake users that exist on the site, artificially inflating the company’s worth.
Musk’s filing admits that he has made this determination without being “provided” the “complete information” that would “enable him to do a complete and comprehensive review of spam and fake accounts on Twitter’s platform,” but he insists that “all indications suggest that several of Twitter’s public disclosures regarding its mDAUs (monetizable daily active users) are either false or materially misleading.”
In effect, Musk alleges that Twitter is not worth the $44 billion he agreed to pay, because there are far fewer users on the site than the company led him to believe.
While Musk has formally filed to ax the acquisition, it does not necessarily mean he will be successful in canceling the pending transaction, as Twitter’s legal team has made it clear they intend to make Musk go through with the deal.
“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” tweeted Twitter board chairman Bret Taylor immediately after Musk’s filing.
“We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.
When it was announced in April that Musk may be purchasing Twitter, it caused a media frenzy, particularly among those on the political left.
While Musk is not politically conservative, his positive attitude toward freedom of speech led many left-wing pundits to fear that the large social media platform would be less likely to continue their widely-known practice of banning and censoring conservative users.