Elon Musk has dragged Trump in the ongoing investigations about the fake accounts on Twitter. He has said to use “Trump” as a search term to ascertain the number of fake accounts on the social media platform.
This request came through Musk’s attorney, Silpa Maruri; she believed that the former president’s name was often linked with fake accounts (bots) on Twitter.
“Trump is relevant for the reasons we explained, namely that the name is often associated with spam, false accounts, and bots,” Maruri said.
However, Twitter’s attorney, Bradley Wilson, did not entertain the request. Instead, he said it was an unnecessary drill that would produce many results, not the core issue. But then again, a 2016 analysis shows that Trump had regular interactions with bot accounts.
Trump was barred from using the social media platform permanently two days after the January 6 storming of the Capitol building in Washington, DC. Donald Trump remains at the heart of the Capitol Riot controversy as he is said to have incited the crowd to violence.
Musk made a statement in May that he would overturn the ban on the former president and let him express himself on Twitter. However, Musk’s $44 billion acquisition did not materialize after the Tesla CEO accused Twitter of failing to disclose the number of fake accounts in July accurately.
A set of emails also shows that Musk’s lawyers had requested the inclusion of search terms including “Bangalore” and “New Delhi,” per Bloomberg after Musk’s lawyers “recently learned Twitter filed a lawsuit against the government in Bangalore challenging orders blocking certain user accounts.”
“That Twitter filed suit in response to blocking orders already issued strongly suggests an investigation(s) had been underway during the negotiation period and before the merger agreement was executed,” the lawyers said.