Elon Musk demands Twitter employees' names

The Reuters- Elon Musk legal team is demanding that Twitter turns over the names of employees responsible for calculating what percentage of the social media site's users are bot and spam accounts, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Bot and spam accounts on Twitter have become a key issue in the legal fight over whether Musk, who is Tesla's chief executive, must complete his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company.

Musk said last month that he was terminating the deal because Twitter had withheld information about these accounts. Twitter sued Musk to complete the deal, and has said the issue has no bearing on the agreement with Musk.

There is an Oct. 17 trial in Delaware.

In a letter filed under seal on Tuesday, Musk's lawyers asked the judge overseeing the case to compel Twitter to hand over the employee names so that the defense team can question them, the source said.

The request by Musk's lawyers was first reported by Bloomberg.

A lawyer for Musk didn't want to say anything. Twitter didn't respond immediately to a request for comment.