Billionaire Elon Musk had to make a statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a tweet about his plan to buy Twitter in May.

The letter, sent by the regulator in June, questioned the businessman’s lawyers about a message on May 17 suggesting that the acquisition could not proceed unless Twitter made it clear that less than 5% of the platform’s accounts were fake or spammy.

“The term ‘can’t’ indicates that Mr. Musk and his partners exercised a legal right under the terms of the merger agreement to suspend completion of the Twitter acquisition. Or they don’t intend to complete the purchase,” he said.

Musk’s lawyer

The document stated that the 13D form received by the SEC did not consider any changes to what had been previously communicated and requested a “written analysis” supporting any conclusion that a change was not required.

The CNBC chain published the businessman’s lawyer’s response to that letter this Thursday, saying that despite his client’s desire to learn more about spam and fake accounts at the time, this did not amount to a change in the transaction offer.

Musk’s representative, Mike Ringler, warned that his intention was to continue to forward any message to the commission that could be seen as a written request regarding the Twitter shareholder meeting.

Buying Twitter in court

The purchase of the platform is in court.

At the end of April, Twitter’s board had accepted Musk’s takeover offer for approximately $44 billion at $54.20 per share.

On July 8, Tesla and SpaceX founder Musk informed the stock market regulator that he had canceled the purchase, arguing that the technology company violated the terms of the agreement.

Twitter promptly reacted to its intent to challenge that decision in court, and on Tuesday sued the billionaire in a US court specializing in trade disputes to force him to buy the company.