Texts between Elon Musk and a diverse array of celebrities have been released, as the Tesla co-founder prepares to go to court over his agreement to buy Twitter.
Almost everyone with a working internet connection will remember the moment Musk announced his plans to buy Twitter in a staggering $44 billion deal. It was hard to avoid all of the headlines and memes around the purchase, not to mention Musk's own tweets about his many plans for the social media platform.
Musk wasn't only speaking about the deal in the public eye though, and we're now able to see some of the exchanges he had with other billionaires and familiar names as the process began to unfold.
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The release of the text messages comes as Musk seeks to back out of his deal with Twitter; a U-turn which has led to the company filing a lawsuit against him. He's set to appear in court with representatives from the company on 17 October, but the pre-trial discovery process is already underway.
It's not very surprising that Musk's exchanges about the deal were made with the likes of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and CEO Parag Agrawal, but the discovery also reveals texts with people who you might not expect to have any involvement in the deal.
The list includes podcast host Joe Rogan, TV personality Gayle King and Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland, all of whom spoke to Musk about his plans for the company.
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Musk has previously spoken publicly with Rogan during appearances on his podcast, but the host quizzed Musk about Twitter on 4 April, the day his stake in the company became public.
Rogan wrote: "Are you going to liberate twitter from the censorship happy mob?," to which Musk replied: "I will provide advice, which they may or may not choose to follow."
The pair spoke again a couple of weeks later, when Rogan text Musk to say: "I REALLY hope you get Twitter. If you do, we should throw one hell of a party."
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Seemingly in agreement, Musk replied with the "100" emoji.
King's correspondence with Musk came as she sought to secure an interview with him, with one message reading: "Are you ready to do a proper sit down with me? so much to discuss! Especially with your Twitter play... what do I need to do???"
Musk appeared to brush off this particular exchange as he initially replied to say: "Owning ~9% is not quite control." He later added that he thought Oprah Winfrey would make a good addition to Twitter's board.
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He made similar comments to Roiland, who had reached out to say "I f*****g love that you're the majority owner of Twitter" and suggested Musk meet friends of his who had created a program to verify people's identities.
In response, Musk said: "I just own 9% of Twitter, so don't control the company."
These particular exchanges are just some of conservations Musk had in relation to his Twitter deal, so we'll have to wait and see whether they're put to use in the upcoming trial.
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Emily Brown