Lawyers for Elon Musk cited allegations from a Twitter whistleblower as additional reasons to terminate the billionaire's proposed acquisition of the social media platform.
Musk's attorneys, in a Tuesday filing, claimed accusations by Twitter's former head of security meant that the social media giant had breached the conditions in the merger agreement.
In a whistleblower complaint made public last week, Peiter Zatko claimed Twitter has major security flaws that present a threat to its users' personal information and even to national security.
The new filing cited "egregious deficiencies" mentioned by Zatko, who was fired from Twitter earlier this year, Bloomberg reported.
"Allegations regarding certain facts, known to Twitter prior to and as of July 8, 2022, but undisclosed to the Musk Parties prior to and at that time, have since come to light that provide additional and distinct bases to terminate the Merger Agreement," lawyer Mike Ringler wrote in a letter to Twitter's legal chief, CNBC reported.
Ringler added that the latest termination notice is "not legally necessary" to end the merger deal, but is being delivered in case an earlier filing is "determined to be invalid for any reason," CNBC said.
Bloomberg reported that Twitter didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The company previously said Zatko's complaint was "a false narrative about Twitter and our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context."
Musk has been trying to back out of a $44 billion agreement by saying Twitter misled him on the number of false or spam accounts, prompting strong denials from the social media company.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk sent a letter to Twitter's board on July 8 saying he was terminating the acquisition.
The letter said that Musk, for nearly two months, had sought data to judge the prevalence of "fake or spam" accounts on the social media platform.
Twitter then sued Musk on July 12 for violating the $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform and asked a Delaware court to order the world's richest person to complete the merger, according to a court filing.
Twitter has claimed that spam and bots make up fewer than 5% of accounts.
A trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 17 in Delaware.
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