Twitter says an Elon Musk ally is trying to 'flip Twitter the bird' and dodge legal requests over his involvement in the $44 billion deal
- Twitter clapped back at claims from David Sacks that it was harassing the Silicon Valley investor.
- On Monday, the company filed a response to Sacks' attempt to quash several subpoenas.
Twitter's legal team had some choice words for Silicon Valley investor David Sacks in a legal filing over Elon Musk's $44 billion deal to purchase the social media giant.
On Monday, Twitter clapped back at Sacks' claims that the company was harassing him. The investor, who is one of the entrepreneurs that helped Musk found PayPal, is attempting to get the Delaware judge overseeing Twitter's lawsuit against Musk to toss out several subpoenas that were sent to his companies, Craft Ventures Management and Sacks.com.
In its response to Sacks' motion to quash the subpoenas, Twitter called the investor's response "vulgar" and "swift and obscene," referencing tweets that he directed at the social media company that included an image of a middle finger, as well as a video of a man urinating on a subpoena.
Twitter said the motion to quash the subpoenas "serves no apparent purpose beyond satisfying Sacks' desire to flip Twitter the bird." Sacks did not respond to Insider's request for comment ahead of publication.
The investor complied with Twitter's legal request for information about his companies' knowledge of Musk's decision to walk away from the purchase, per a filing from Thursday. But, Twitter called his response "delayed, secretive, and incomplete compliance" and has issued subpoenas to both his companies from Delaware and California.
The social media company said Sacks has "misled the public" through a podcast and Bloomberg Television segment in which he repeatedly asserted he was not involved in Musk's plans to buy Twitter or ultimately attempt to walk away from the deal.
"Musk himself has since identified Sacks as one of just four individuals with whom he privately communicated about the deal," the filing reads. "And Sacks' fund, Craft, not only engaged with Musk as a potential co-investor — it went so far as to enter into a non-disclosure agreement with Musk to evaluate that investment. Sacks did not mention any of that during his misleading media junket."
'Off-the-cuff'
In the podcast Twitter references, Sacks appears to mock the social media company's legal team.
"Now I know to a lawyer at Wachtel Lipton, that looking at my tweets and how brilliant they are, you may think that I have extensive documentation and source material for them, but let me tell you what happened," Sacks said. "I went to go take a shit, and I basically tweeted off-the-cuff, and that's how the tweet ended up in the public record. There are no documents or communications concerning my tweets, and this idea that somehow, I guess what they're trying to get at is that somehow I was tweeting on behalf of someone or at someone's behest."
Twitter's initial subpoena referenced several of Sack's tweets, including one in which he provides a checklist for the next CEO of Twitter. The company said the tweets showed he "anticipated Musk's attacks" against Twitter.
Sacks is one of several Musk acquaintances who have been subpoenaed in the runup to the five-day trial in October. Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that both sides have issued over 100 subpoenas to Silicon Valley's elite, from Jack Dorsey to Larry Ellison and Marc Andreessen.
Most recently, Musk's legal team is attempting to amend its initial counterclaims against Twitter's lawsuit. The social media company says it plans to force Musk to go through with the $44 billion purchase, and Musk is arguing Twitter intentionally misled him about the number of daily users and spam accounts on its site. Now, Musk wants to include additional claims from an explosive whistleblower complaint in his argument.