Musk appears in court to face allegations of market manipulation during the Twitter acquisition

According to market news, Musk acknowledged that in the multi-billion dollar lawsuit surrounding his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, he stated that the tweet he posted "may not have been my wisest move," while the world's richest man is defending himself in court against allegations of market manipulation. He told a San Francisco jury on Wednesday that the tweet was not intended to manipulate Twitter's stock price, which was during the acquisition negotiations.

A group of Twitter investors claims they suffered losses after Musk threatened to walk away from the deal to gain leverage in the acquisition talks, despite Musk knowing he was legally obligated to complete the $44 billion acquisition. After signing a binding acquisition agreement in April 2022 and waiving his right to conduct due diligence, Musk quickly began questioning the number of bot accounts on the platform.

On May 13, 2022, he tweeted that unless the company could prove that "spam/fake accounts are indeed less than 5% of users," the deal would be "on hold temporarily." On that day, Twitter's stock price fell by 9% at the opening.