Twitter sues Elon Musk to force $44 billion deal

The popular social media company Twitter filed a lawsuit against entrepreneur Elon Musk to force him to follow through on the $44 billion deal he agreed to in April to acquire the platform.

Twitter filed the lawsuit on Tuesday.

Musk indicated in a letter on Friday that he was withdrawing from the massive deal to buy Twitter over the number of fake accounts on the platform.

"Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information," the letter read. "Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk's requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information."

The company has estimated that about 5% of the users on the platform are fake or bots, but Musk claimed in June that as many as 20% or more of the users aren't real.

In the lawsuit against Musk, lawyers for the platform accuse him of breach of contract.

"Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away," the complaint reads.

"Since signing the merger agreement, Musk has repeatedly disparaged Twitter and the deal, creating business risk for Twitter and downward pressure on its share price," the company added.

Musk had reportedly agreed to pay Twitter $1 billion if he pulled out of the deal.

After he said he was pulling out of the deal, Musk tweeted a meme implying that Twitter would be forced to reveal how many users were fake during the discovery phase of the trial. That tweet quickly went viral.

The billionaire appeared to comment about the development in a simple tweet Tuesday.

"Oh the irony lol," he tweeted.

Cybersecurity attorney Leeza Garber told Neil Cavuto on his Fox News show that the only people who will win are the lawyers through their billable hours. Garber also said that it is very unlikely that the court will force Musk to follow through on the multi-billion dollar deal.

Here's more about the lawsuit against Musk:

Elon Musk-Twitter slugfest: 'Only the lawyers are really going to win'www.youtube.com