• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 3, 2022

Twitter is asking for all of Tesla’s documents and communications related to CEO Elon Musk’s bid to take over the social media company. It is also pulling in his circle of friends. 

The electric carmaker is the latest player to get swallowed into the mess Musk created after attempting, and then abandoning plans to buy Twitter, The Verge reports, citing a subpoena filed Aug. 2.

Twitter’s subpoena outlines a list of 27 requests to Tesla, including internal communications between Musk and Twitter, and between Musk and co-investors such as Larry Ellison, which The Verge reported earlier this year gave Musk $1 billion for the deal.

The list of investors includes venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, financial firm Fidelity, crypto exchange Binance, and the state investment firm of Qatar.

The subpoena requests all documents related to the roughly $8.4 billion worth of Tesla stock Musk sold to finance the takeover bid.

On May 13, Musk said he was putting the Twitter deal on hold in a tweet pending additional information about spam bots on the platform.

Twitter is suing Musk in hopes of forcing him to go through with his $44 billion purchase. Musk wants to abandon the deal, claiming Twitter violated an agreement by failing to disclose accurate information around spam accounts.

The subpoena also brings in investors Keith Rabois, and Joe Lonsdale who, in a tweet, said Twitter is sending subpoenas to friends, and called the requests a "giant harassing fishing expedition."

“I have nothing to do with this aside from a few snarky comments, but got a ‘YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED’ document notice,” Lonsdale tweeted.

Chamath Palihapitiya, and Marc Andreessen also got hooked into the legal battle, as well as David Sacks, an entrepreneur who previously helped Musk found PayPal.

Tesla has seven days to produce all the materials requested to Twitter’s legal team, according to the report.