So it may just be another event which will drive Twitter's price down even further and make it a _worse_ deal for him.

From Bloomberg "The buyers could only back out of the agreement in the case of a material adverse effect, a high bar that excludes issues like market volatility or industry challenges." (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-07-13/elon-m...).

I suppose one could argue that the Whistleblower's report is "material adverse affect", something I'm sure will come out in the trial.

The reach of HN on the tech world is highly influential, and for sure it is weaponized in "communication wars" across actors with different interests.

EDIT: that doesn't mean that the given information is necessarily false, it is just presented at the right time, to promote one view of the world. Also when Twitter hit bottom some years ago several HN submissions remind us how they declined being purchased by Facebook etc, and social network giants have a large track of understanding how such information flows and influences people.

So about a few hours.

*Walter Bloomberg @DeItaone ELON MUSK’S LEGAL TEAM HAS SUBPOENAED PEITER “MUDGE” ZATKO, TWITTER’S FORMER HEAD OF SECURITY - CNN 8:30 AM · Aug 23, 2022·TweetDeck