Elon Musk is still complaining about the “supernova” level of interest in his “affair” with friend Sergey Brin’s wife and has requested a judge to put off the trial to decide his attempt to back out of a $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.
According to a court document submitted on Tuesday, the Tesla CEO asked for the five-day trial to start on October 17 rather than October 10, as Twitter had requested.
The world’s richest man, Musk, is represented by a lawyer who claims he is writing to the judge to ask him to “break the impasse and allow things to go forward expeditiously.”
A trial for October has been set by Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, the head judge on Delaware’s Court of Chancery.
This trial is expected to be one of the largest legal battles involving Wall Street in recent memory.
She did, however, leave the specific schedule up to the parties.
Musk had first asked for a February trial, which he claimed would give him enough time to conduct a full probe into Twitter’s phoney accounts.
He claimed that the business misrepresented the number of users it had, infringing the merger agreement and giving him the right to withdraw.
Twitter opted not to respond.
The business, which had asked for a September trial, claimed that the phoney account problem was a diversion and that Musk must pay up in accordance with the terms of the agreement.
In addition, Twitter was ordered in the Musk letter to provide the judge with what it called “essential records” right away, all raw data by August 1st, and documents within 18 days of a request.
Musk claimed that Twitter was withholding all of the items in the data room, including manuals, policies, and procedures pertaining to active daily user computations and artificial intelligence.
Musk’s request to delay the trial comes in the wake of news that the billionaire had slept with Sergey Brin’s wife, Nicole Shanahan, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In response to reports that he had an affair with the wife of the co-founder of Google, he continued to display annoyance, with The Wall Street Journal’s investigations editor tweeting on Monday that he was attempting to avoid the “supernova” level of attention on him.
The bombshell revelation that Musk, 51, had slept with Sergey Brin’s wife, Nicole, and that it was the cause of their divorce was refuted by Musk, who tweeted a picture of himself having fun with Brin on Sunday.
In a lighthearted allusion to the trite adage “lie, liar, pants on fire,” Musk sent the picture and long pants with fire emojis in response to Investigations Editor Michael Siconolfi.
The multi-billionaire Tesla CEO lamented the coverage again on Monday night, writing on Twitter: “The amount of attention on me has gone supernova, which absolutely stinks.”
Sadly, even unimportant pieces about me attract a lot of clicks.
Will do my best to keep my head down and stay focused on contributing to civilisation, he added.
According to The Wall Street Journal, which is standing by its report, Musk and Shanahan had a romantic relationship at Art Basel in December of last year, which not only strained Musk’s relationship with Sergey but also sparked their divorce.
A newspaper spokesman told DailyMail.com, “We are confident in our sourcing and we stand by our story.”
In the photo, Musk is pictured standing alongside Sergey and two other women. Musk was last spotted in Mykonos last week, so it’s unknown exactly where it was taken, but his jet made a Saturday trip from Austin, where he lives, to San Jose.
On Sunday, it returned to Austin and touched down at 11 p.m.
He had earlier rejected all of the Journal’s allegations that he had slept with Shanahan at Art Basel in Miami last December.
Brin, the creator of Google, announced his intention to divorce his wife in January, citing their inability to come to an agreement.
They have a four-year-old daughter together.
Nicole, his ex-wife, and Brin have not responded to the Journal’s allegations.
The tabloid, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, has been the target of Musk’s Twitter rants, in which he claims that it has been publishing “hit articles” about him all year.
‘WSJ should only publish news that directly affect their readers and have a strong factual foundation, not hearsay from unreliable sources.
This year, character assassination attacks have increased, yet the publications are all garbage. I simply don’t have much time for mischief because of my erratic job schedule.
“None of the important individuals connected to these alleged wrongdoings were even questioned!”
“Michael Siconolfi has no journalistic integrity,” says one observer.
Nobody has responded from Siconolfi.
The article stated that Brin was also divesting himself of all of his ownership stakes in Musk’s businesses.
Friends since childhood, Brin gave Musk $500,000 in 2008 to help him finance Tesla at the height of the global financial crisis.
Additionally, he loaned Musk the Google Party Plane in 2010 for the Tesla CEO’s nuptials to actress Talulah Riley.