Elon Musk has mocked Twitter taking him to court for backing out of his $44billion takeover with a series of memes.
The billionaire, 51, shared one showing a picture of Chuck Norris at a chess board with one pawn confidently staring down a full set of black pieces.
Another appeared to poke fun at the social media giant for taking legal action because it means they will have disclose their spam bot details that he wants.
The series of comments were shared alongside pictures of him hysterically laughing on the right-hand side.
It comes after Musk backed out of his blockbuster deal on Friday because Twitter refused to hand over information on the number of fake accounts on its site.
But the tech giant quickly hit back and said it would be dragging him to Delaware Chancery Court to try to force through the merger.
The world’s richest man avoided the topic when he appeared at the Sun Valley Conference in Idaho on Saturday but finally spoke out through the memes.
One of them said: ‘They said I couldn’t buy Twitter. Then they wouldn’t disclose bot info.
‘Now they want to first me to buy Twitter in court. Now they have to disclose bot info in court.’
In the post featuring legendary TV hardman Chuck Norris, he captioned it: ‘Chuckmate.’
Musk replied to one user who made reference to the amount of spambots that they regularly see on the site.
The South African simply wrote: ‘Hellow??? @SECGov,’ the Twitter handle of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Twitter on Sunday hired a heavy-hitting Delaware-based law firm to sue Musk for backing out of his $44billion deal to buy the company.
The social media giant brought in Watchell, Lipton Rosen & Katz, and plans to file suit against Musk early this week, Bloomberg reported.
The hiring of Wachtell gives the company access to lawyers Leo Strine and Bill Savitt, who previously served as Chancellors of the Delaware Chancery Court.
Delaware’s chancery courts deal with non-jury proceedings overseen by judges known as chancellors.
They often tackle business wrangles, with many top US firms – including Twitter – basing their corporate headquarters there, even when their main offices lie elsewhere.
Chancery courts cannot order punitive damages to be paid, and generally hear cases more quickly than criminal trials, with the Twitter debacle likely to be wrapped-up within a few months.
Musk hired Emanual Urquhart & Sullivan LLP., the firm which defended him in a 2019 defamation case, and is currently representing him in lawsuit related to Tesla.
The billionaire entrepreneur and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX took the stage at the Allen & Co Sun Valley Conference, an annual gathering of media and technology executives in Idaho, less than 24-hours after he announced he was terminating his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter Inc.
Musk’s arrival at the conference, known as the ‘billionaires’ summer camp,’ delivered a jolt to the off-record event this week, where the headline-making typically happens beyond the prying eyes of the media.
The interview was conducted by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research company, funded by Musk and several others, as the world’s richest man discussed the possibility of life on Mars in the future, but stayed silent about Twitter.
‘It just seems like an absolute mess,’ said one senior media executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the interview. ‘The guy makes his own rules … I’d hate to be Twitter, where you have to take this guy seriously.’
Sun Valley is typically covered like an athleisure version of the Met Gala, with photographers capturing the arrivals of fleece-vested media moguls and reporters making note of power-lunches at the Konditorei cafe on the property.
This year, the five-day, invite-only conference, running from July 6 to 10, is being held at the edge of Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest in a tiny town of just 1,500 people.
One Hollywood power-broker on Friday expressed hope that the Musk interview would enliven the conference’s staid, cerebral atmosphere this year.
Following Musk´s announcement, one chief executive noted the elephant in the room – Saturday´s remarks might well be uncomfortable to two conference attendees: Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal.
One of Musk’s last public messages to Agrawal came in the form of a tweet of a poop emoji in response to the Twitter CEO’s defense of how the company accounts for spam bots.
It is not clear if Musk has met Agrawal or Segal at the Idaho event.
Musk’s attorneys had delivered an eight-page letter to Twitter, saying he planned to call off the deal to acquire the social network.
The document, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, alleged Twitter failed to respond to repeated requests for information over the past two months, or obtain his consent before taking actions that would impact its business – such as firing two key executives.
Experts speculated the move may have been a bid to drive the price down. Musk initially offered $54.20 per share in April, but the price was down to $36.81 on Friday night.
Bret Taylor, Twitter’s chairman, tweeted on Friday the board was ‘committed to closing the transaction’ under the current terms of the deal and they were ‘confident’ they would win.
Attorney Mike Ringler – acting for Musk – claimed Twitter was in material breach of multiple provisions of the agreement.
In the documents filed to the SEC, Ringler wrote: ‘Mr. Musk is terminating the Merger Agreement because Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that Agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement, and is likely to suffer a Company Material Adverse Effect.
‘While Section 6.4 of the Merger Agreement requires Twitter to provide Mr. Musk and his advisors all data and information that Mr. Musk requests ‘for any reasonable business purpose related to the consummation of the transaction,’ Twitter has not complied with its contractual obligations.
‘For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to ‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform.’
‘This information is fundamental to Twitter’s business and financial performance and is necessary to consummate the transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement because it is needed to ensure Twitter’s satisfaction of the conditions to closing, to facilitate Mr. Musk’s financing and financial planning for the transaction, and to engage in transition planning for the business.
‘Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information. Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information.’
Musk had previously threatened to halt the deal unless the firm showed proof spam and bot accounts were fewer than 5 percent of users who see advertising on the social media service.
But Twitter immediately threatened to take legal action and said it was confident it would win.
Taylor tweeted: ‘The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement.
‘We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.’ That message was later retweeted by CEO Agrawal.
Adam Sterling told DailyMail.com: ‘The Delaware courts does a pretty good job of balancing shareholder and corporate interests.’
He added: ‘Twitter has constantly found itself in tough positions here. I think clearly with Elon attempting to terminate the deal they are obligated to pursue legal action against him based off of their fiduciary obligations to their shareholders. It’s all shocking but not surprising.’
In an internal memo, Twitter’s general counsel reportedly said: ‘Given this is an ongoing legal matter, you should refrain from Tweeting, Slacking, or sharing any commentary about the Merger Agreement.’
Speaking to NBC News about the collapsed deal, an anonymous Twitter employee said that Musk had ‘f**king destroyed the company.’
The employee said: ‘I guess it feels like we won. But it feels like the end of the movie, where the characters are bloodied and bedraggled with a Michael Bay explosion behind them. We could see this was coming, but in the meantime he’s f**king destroyed the company.’
During an all-hands meeting with employees in April, Agrawal attempted to quell employee anger after workers demanded answers to how managers planned to handle an anticipated mass exodus prompted by Musk.
Agrawal stood to make $42 million if the Musk deal went ahead.
