• Elon Musk's social circle is pushing back against a flurry of subpoenas from Twitter.
  • Last week, the company subpoenaed Musk's associates, some of whom say they weren't involved in the deal.
  • David Sacks called Twitter's legal requests "petty" and "vindictive."

Some of Silicon Valley's biggest names have had some choice words for Twitter in recent days after the company dragged Elon Musk's social circle into its legal battle with the richest man in the world.

David Sacks, one of the entrepreneurs who helped Musk found PayPal, called the subpoenas "harassment" and a "fishing expedition" that is "petty" and "vindictive," during his weekly appearance on the "All-In" podcast on Friday.

Sacks and another host, investor David Friedberg, appeared to mock the subpoenas from the law firm representing Twitter, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz LLP, in its lawsuit seeking to force Musk to close the deal. The subpoena, which Sacks said is about 30 pages long and requests any communications with his friends over the past six months, includes requests for documentation related to Sack's public tweets about Musk's purchase.

"Now I know to a lawyer at Wachtel Lipton, that looking at my tweets and how brilliant they are you may think that I have extensive documentation and source material for them, but let me tell you what happened," Sacks said. "I went to go take a shit and and I basically tweeted off the cuff and that's how the tweet ended up in the public record. There are no documents or communications concerning my tweets and this idea that somehow, I guess what they're trying to get at is that somehow I was tweeting on behalf of someone or at someone's behest."

The subpoena references several of Sack's tweets, including one in which he provides a checklist for the next CEO of Twitter.

 

Chamath Palihapitiya, a billionaire investor who was also subpoenaed last week, said he was confused when he received the subpoena.

"The whole thing is just an enormous waste of time," Palihapitiya said in the podcast. 

Palihapitiya also commented on concerns related to the number of bots on the platform.

"Just as a user, the bot issue is very real," he said. "I used to be an ardent user of Twitter and I think in the last year it has become exceptionally unusable," he added.

Both Sacks and Palihapitiya have been critical of the site in the past over bots, as well as claims of censorship on the platform.

Last week, investor Joe Lonsdale, who attended the All-In Summit in May alongside Musk, called the subpoenas a "giant harassing fishing expedition" on Twitter.

Sacks also responded to the subpoena on Twitter with an image of a middle finger.

 

On Friday, Sacks said it was the first subpoena he'd received in over five years and that he planned to bring in a lawyer to quash the legal request.

Spokespeople for Sacks, Palihapitiya, and Lonsdale did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

The subpoenas to Musk's social circle represent a handful of a flurry of legal requests that have been sent out in the wake of Musk's attempt to back out of the $44 billion purchase.

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