The Twitter lawsuit against Musk could be on hold for now, but information about the suspended case continues to emerge. In the latest revelation, the billionaire’s legal team accused the social media company of making its former executive (and current buzzer) Peiter “Mudge” Zatko destroyed documentation of his time on Twitter, including evidence of the company’s security flaws.
The removal of the documents was allegedly a condition of $7.8 million from work the package that Zatko received in June. He spent about a year as the company’s chief security officer before being fired.
“Twitter negotiated a unique “severance package” with Mr. Zatko in June 2022, which was clearly intended to ensure the silence of Mr. Zatko and prevent him from coming forward with his whistleblower disclosures,” Edward B. Micheletti, one of Musk’s lawyers, wrote in a October 3 court submissionwhich was unsealed on Monday.
“In addition to making a much larger severance payment than usual for other former executives, Twitter asked Mr. Zatko agreed, as a condition of the payment, to return or destroy all documents in his possession that contained Twitter information—an instruction that changed once again. from Twitter’s usual severance agreements that require an employee to simply ‘return’ such documents,” the lawyer continued.
Specifically, Zatko said he burned 10 handwritten notebooks containing information from meetings with Twitter executives and deleted more than 100 electronic documents, according to the legal filing.
The complaint about Zatko’s whistleblower has now become central to Musk’s claims that Twitter violated the original terms of their purchase agreement, due to the number of bots on the platform. The former executive testified before Congress and fell in the ongoing Twitter/Musk affair, after being summoned. The destruction of the document was allegedly discovered during that testimony.
Beyond describing the alleged book burning, Micheletti’s letter also claims that such an opt-out clause is illegal, based on 2011 Federal Trade Commission Consent Order against Twitter (as well as another decree of 2022). The FTC previously ordered the social media company to keep any documents contradicting the company’s data management and privacy claims for five years. As a result, Musk’s legal team requested that the court order the company to produce “all documents and communications related to the termination of Mr. Zatko, the separation agreement and the instruction to destroy the documents”.
Twitter did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s questions or request for comment about the Oct. 3 letter. company Musk sued in July for trying to walk away from its $44 billion deal to buy the platform.
Recently, Tesla’s CEO offered to complete the deal, at the original price, if Twitter was willing to cease all legal proceedings against him. company did not accept that offer, and for now, the case is on hold and the trial has been postponed until October 28 – pending a deal. Yet the twists and turns keep coming.
