Twitter drags Elon Musk’s billionaire buddies into legal battle

San Francisco: Twitter has now dragged tech investors and entrepreneur friends connected to Elon Musk in the $44 billion takeover deal that has been terminated by the Tesla CEO and a legal trial is set to begin from October 17.

According to The Washington Post, Twitter’s legal team in a subpoena in the court has asked for “extensive requests for communications, including checklists, timelines, presentations, decks, organisational calls, meetings, notes, recordings” related to the deal’s financing.

The top investors mentioned in the subpoena are Marc Andreessen, founder of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z), former Facebook executive and CEO of Social Capital, Chamath Palihapitiya and David Sacks who helped Musk with the formation of financial services firm PayPal.

Twitter’s legal team has also gone after Tesla and SpaceX board member Stephen Jurvetson, and investors Jason Calacanis, Keith Rabois and Joe Lonsdale.

Lonsdale, general partner at VC firm 8VC, called Twitter’s subpoenas sent to a “giant harassing fishing expedition”.

“Lawyers w/ TWTR are sending subpoenas to friends in the ecosystem around @elonmusk and @pmarca and @DavidSacks et al, a giant harassing fishing expedition,” he posted.

“I have nothing to do with this aside from a few snarky comments, but got a ‘YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED’ document notice,” he added.

Musk or his legal team were yet to react to the Twitter subpoena.

The world’s richest person has filed a countersuit against Twitter as part of an ongoing legal dispute with the microblogging platform.

However, the lawsuit is not yet accessible to the public and a partially redacted version may be available soon under court rules.

The US judge in the Twitter vs Musk legal battle has set October 17 as the beginning date of the high-profile trial for five days.