Twitter Inc. agreed in June to pay about $7 million to the whistleblower whose allegations will be part of Elon Musk's case against the company, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The whistleblower, Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, who was fired by Twitter in January, last month accused the social media company of falsely claiming it had a solid security plan and making misleading statements about its defenses against hackers and spam accounts.