Elon Musk testified in a San Francisco court, defending himself against allegations of market manipulation related to his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. Musk admitted that his tweet during the merger negotiations was "perhaps not my wisest move," but insisted it was not intended to influence Twitter's stock price. The lawsuit, brought by Twitter investors, claims they incurred losses when Musk threatened to abandon the deal to gain leverage, despite being legally bound to complete the acquisition. The controversy centers on Musk's May 13, 2022, tweet stating the deal was "temporarily paused" pending verification of spam accounts, which led to a 9% drop in Twitter's stock price. Musk had previously signed a binding agreement in April 2022, waiving due diligence, but later raised concerns about the number of bot accounts on the platform.