As Twitter and Elon Musk prepare for their Oct. 17 hearing in the Delaware Court of Chancery to argue over his attempt to breach their $44 billion acquisition agreement, Musk’s legal team filed a subpoena to seek evidence from a familiar face: former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
Dorsey stepped down as CEO of Twitter for a second time last November, handing over control of the company he helped found to Parag Agrawal. He runs Square and Block and is said to be fueling Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter in private messages.
It’s hard to tell what information Dorsey has that Musk couldn’t get through a simple text message! But with billions of dollars at stake, Musk’s legal team is throwing down all lines to support his (weak) argument that the company isn’t telling the truth about measuring bots and spam among the daily active users on its platform. The subpoena lists what information Dorsey is being asked to provide:
1. Documents and notices relating to the merger and the proposed transaction of the merger, the merger agreement, any potential acquisition or transaction between the defendants and Twitter, the potential or actual acquisition of Twitter common stock by the defendants, the potential membership of the defendants on the Twitter Board, and documents and other communications relating to Twitter and one of the Defendants.
2. Documents and communications reflecting, relating to, or relating to the impact or impact of false or spam accounts on the business and operations of Twitter.
3. Documents and notices reflecting, referencing, or relating to Twitter’s use of mDAU as a “Key Identifier,” as set forth in Twitter’s SEC filings, including documents and notices exposing the relationship between mDAU and the presence of Reflect, refer to, or relate to Twitter or future revenue or EBITDA.
4. Documents and communications reflecting, relating to, or related to Twitter’s use of user metrics other than mDAU, including but not limited to daily active users, monthly active users, daily user engagement, monthly user engagement, or ad engagement.
5. Documents and notices describing processes or workflows other than the mDAU audit and ban workflow that Twitter uses, has used, or has discussed or considered to identify and spam or mislabel accounts.
6. Documents reflecting business plans or analysis to achieve mDAU goals.
7. Documents and communications related to the inclusion of mDAU in executive or director compensation, including but not limited to annual compensation targets, bonus pools, incentive plans, or performance-based restricted stock units.
A recent ruling by Judge Kathaleen McCormick also gave Musk’s team access to information from former Twitter product manager Kayvon Beykpour, and in a separate filing today, Musk’s team subpoenaed the other Twitter exec, Bruce Falck, whom Agrawal fired on the same day as Beykpour would have.