Elon Musk is now under a federal investigation related to his Twitter deal

Elon Musk is currently under a federal investigation related to his $44 BILLION deal to acquire Twitter, according to the company in a court filing made public on Thursday.

It is not clear which agencies are carrying out the investigation, and Twitter has not specified which actions by Musk US officials are investigating. Twitter’s filing only noted that the authorities are looking into Musk’s “conduct” linked to the deal.

The company’s court filing elsewhere accused Musk’s legal team of failing to create draft communications with the Securities and Exchange Commission and a slide presentation to the Federal Trade Commission as part of the two sides’ ongoing litigation over whether Musk can walk away from the deal.

Twitter said it asked for months that Musk’s lawyers produce their communications with federal authorities but they had not done so, and asked a Delaware judge to order the attorneys to provide the documents.

In September, Musk’s attorneys provided a “privilege log” identifying documents to be withheld from discovery.

The log referenced drafts of an email from May 13th to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and a slide presentation to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), according to Twitter.

“This game of ‘hide the ball’ must end,” Twitter said in the court filing.

Twitter’s court request was filed on October 6th, the same day the judge ceased the litigation Elon Musk and Twitter to finalize the deal.

The SEC has questioned Elon Musk’s comments about the Twitter acquisition. In April, the SEC asked Musk whether the disclosure of his 9% Twitter stake was late and why it indicated that he intended to be a passive shareholder. Musk later refiled the disclosure to indicate he was an active investor.

In June, the SEC asked Musk whether he should have amended his public filing to reflect his choice to end or abandon the deal. Elon Musk proposed going through with his deal to buy Twitter at the original price he had agreed on of $54.20/share.

The judge overseeing the dispute ruled to pause the legal proceedings until October 28th as per requested by Musk.

Musk’s lawyer says the investigation is a distraction.

Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney, said Twitter’s filing was to distract from Twitter’s own legal problems, which appeared after the company’s former head of security Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, accused Twitter of long-ignored security vulnerabilities in a whistleblower disclosure.

“Twitter’s executives are under federal investigation,” Spiro said in a statement. “This misdirection was sent by Twitter to try and uncover which of their assorted misconduct they are under investigation for.”

The Federal Trade Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the terms of a 2011 consent order with Twitter that Zatko alleges the company violated, has not publicly disclosed an investigation. Lina Khan, its chairman told Congress in a public testimony that if it’s determined Twitter executives were responsible for legal violations, the FTC “absolutely” would and “won’t hesitate” to hold those executives personally accountable.

In a separate filing on Thursday, Twitter also argued that it did not demand Zatko to burn several notebooks as part of a separation agreement, as Musk’s team had claimed in a filing earlier this month. Instead, Twitter claimed, Zatko destroyed the notebooks at his own discretion.

“Twitter did not ask Zatko to torch his own documents, much less demand that he do so,” Twitter’s filing stated. “Twitter had no knowledge of Zatko’s notebooks and no idea what information they contained.”