Elon Musk testified he had to pay full price to buy Twitter in 2022 because the Delaware judge in the company’s lawsuit to make him consummate the $44 billion deal was “biased” against him, Bloomberg News reported.
Musk has openly complained before about Delaware Chancery Court’s chief judge, Kathaleen St. J. McCormick. But his testimony at a San Francisco trial revisiting the tumultuous buyout marked the first time the world’s richest person has publicly said why he ultimately decided to back down in his fight with Twitter, the report added.
Musk said his lawyers warned him he was unlikely to beat the suit after McCormick issued pretrial rulings favoring Twitter. In a separate case, McCormick twice voided Musk’s Tesla (TSLA) pay package, which the Delaware Supreme Court reinstated in December 2025.
“The lawyers said there was no choice,” Musk told jurors, explaining why he ultimately agreed to close the deal after months of dispute. The testimony came during a trial examining claims from Twitter investors that Musk misled markets during the turbulent takeover process.
According to Bloomberg, the investors argue Musk’s comments — including posts suggesting the deal was temporarily “on hold” — influenced trading behaviour and caused financial losses for some shareholders.
One investor, Brian Belgrave, told the court he sold thousands of Twitter shares in July 2022 after concluding Musk would abandon the takeover. Belgrave later watched Musk complete the acquisition at $54.20 per share, a price significantly higher than the amount he had received when selling his holdings. “I got cheated,” Belgrave said in testimony cited by Bloomberg.
In March 2025, xAI acquired Twitter (now X) in an all-stock deal that valued the social media platform at about $33 billion.
Musk’s X competes with other popular social media firms such as Meta’s (META) Facebook and Instagram, Google’s YouTube, Snap’s (SNAP) Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest (PINS), Microsoft’s (MSFT) LinkedIn, and Reddit (RDDT).