this deal ever really start? is was it ever really, well, real? did elon musk ever truly intend to buy out the company, and if he did, what happened? and now what happens? welcome, everyone, i m neil cavuto and happy weekend and not if you re a twitter shareholder on news that elon musk is quitting. the latest from kelly o grady out in los angeles on what went wrong. reporter: hey, neil. what a roller coaster, right? elon is claiming he has grounds to terminate the social platform because they failed to provide key information and that the company appears to have made misleading statements during their negotiations. now, this really all comes down to the number of spam bots on the platform. the reason bots are so important is musk has made no new attempts to grow the revenue, and that risks on act rests on active users. all indications suggest that several of twitter s public exposures are either false or
materially misleading. it appears twitter is dramatically understating the number of spam and false accounts. can he legally walk away? there s a billion dollar break-up fee, but the tesla ceo could face far bigger consequences if a bitter legal battle ensues. musk has waive had waived his right to poke under the hood, but if his team can prove twitter intentionally misled, transaction lawyers tell me he does have cause. it ll be tough. and if the social platform did lie to the sec, they re in trouble with them, shareholders and potentially with advertisers. the reality is twitter sells views, and if those views to advertisers are not real people, then they have been defrauded. and so those, the potential for those claims exists. reporter: now, for all this
ice with courts and regulators, i would suppose. again, if he has the goods about twitter and the bots, he s going to have to show it. and if he doesn t, you know, he s in a legal bind because it s not the $1 billion break-up fee, it s damages, it s neil: oh, yeah. tesla has a lot at its disposal, but the tesla s a more desperate sort of plier here, right player here, right? legally, he might want to strike a deal or find a middle ground on this. you said tesla, you mean twitter. neil: i apologize. you re right. twitter, and that s the sort of problem that twitter has. if elon is out of this deal, because there s no buyers. we reported this hundreds of times. there was all these stories about when he was pitching it initially that, you know, the private ec by firms they re not. neil: what about those other potential helpers? larry ellison comes to mind of
talk it could also be a ploy to negotiate a eloper price, okay? the stock closed 32% lower yesterday than missing s offer price, and it s trading each lower in after hours. we ve seen dramatic before to back twitter into a corner, and the stock is going to be this freefall in he does walk, and the board does know that. neil: you know, kelly, obviously, a lot of twitter workers with apoplectic the, you know, many tweeting about it pretty much along the scenes this guy screwed us, and he was intending to do that all along. how bad is this getting? reporter: yeah. i mean, i ve talked to a number of folks at twitter, and they re very frustrated because they feel like they ve just been thrown back and forth. a number of people have left the company, a number of people had been laid off prior to this, and it s not just twitter employees, it s twitter shareholders. they could have sold a while
a recession. okay we gotta talk about elon musk. that s what we talked about the last time we saw each other. can he get out of this deal? what could it cost him? so he s definitely trying. it s going to wind up being delaware or forces we call. it s gonna go up a up against a chart i judge. there s gonna be a settlement out of court, he probably win. could be he ll end up settling for a few billion dollars, but it s also possible the court could just say no, no you signed a deal to buy this company, you have to buy this company. they could force him to by twitter even if he doesn t want it. that would just be genius. so then, what do you think musk s motives were here? it seems like the effect of elon s musk to by twitter was