According to a lawyer for Elon Musk, Twitter Inc. paid a whistle-blower who raised a $7 million question about operational problems within the social media platform to protect his silence.
The payment was mentioned in a September 6 hearing in a lawsuit between Twitter and Musk over its efforts to cancel the company’s $44 billion purchase. “They’re paying the man $7 million and making sure he’s sober,” Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, said during the hearing. People familiar with the matter confirmed that the reference was to a payment to whistle-blower Peter Zatko.
Twitter representatives declined to comment on Thursday about payments to Jatco, the company’s former security chief. The Wall Street Journal reported the payment on Thursday. The paper, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter, said the payment was part of a settlement relating to the compensation Jatco lost after leaving Twitter. The deal didn’t let Zatko speak publicly, but did allow him to act as a government whistle-blower about his time at the social media company, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Musk walked away from his acquisition of Twitter because the platform misled him and investors about the number of spam and bot accounts Among its more than 230 million users. Twitter counters that Musk’s bot concerns are an excuse to pull out of a deal in which the world’s richest man allegedly developed buyer’s remorse.
Both sides are gearing up for an October trial of Twitter’s lawsuit to force Musk to complete the deal. Delaware Chancery Judge Kathleen St. Jude McCormick approved Musk’s bid on Wednesday to add Zatko’s allegations to her counterclaims. But he refused her bid to delay the trial.
The billionaire argues that Zatko raised concerns about the number of bots, along with allegations of loose computer security and privacy issues in Twitter’s customer base before being pulled from the social media platform. Musk argues that Zatko’s claims bolster his arguments that he legitimately canceled the deal.
During his argument with McCormick, Twitter’s lawyers took aim at Zatko’s credibility, blaming his complaints to harm the company from which he was fired and was not credible.
Spiro defended Zatko, saying that the whistleblower not only took his money and left his issues with Twitter behind. Instead, he approached Congress and regulators with his complaints. Jatko is due to testify before a Senate committee next week and has also been called to testify in the Twitter trial.
“The problem is they paid him $7 million,” Spiro told the judge. “The problem is, if he really wanted the money, how is he still going to do it if he doesn’t even want justice.”
The case is Twitter v. Musk, 22-0613, Delaware Chancery Court (Wilmington).
This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.
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