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Comment by helsinkiandrew | Hacker News Reader

Musk appears to care less and less about the law or his word. He broke numerous SEC rules in the bid and the share buying beofre, he's broken agreements with Twitter. He could let Twitter take him to court and drag it out for years whilst they stagnate in limbo and not really care.

The best leverage Twitter has is to threaten to take away his twitter account - hit him where it hurts.

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> Musk appears to care less and less about the law or his word.

True, but that is because nobody tries to go after his stupid moves. Even the SEC seems to have given up. Twitter can absolutely force him to honor the contract he signed; but it's true it's unlikely they will do it, but they may. Why write up a big contract like this if there was no intention to enforce it in the first place?

> The best leverage Twitter has is to threaten to take away his twitter account - hit him where it hurts.

Yes, that would be extremely funny, and a big relief for everyone.

Twitter didn't want him to buy Twitter, so they should be happy to accept the $1B fine. Whether Musk follows the law or not, I think that anybody except maybe DT will be happy to see this deal fail.

The $1B fine is if Musk can't raise the capital - he's already submitted to the SEC how he has raised it - the contract gives Twitter the right to force him to close. Only a massive Tesla stock collapse would perhaps result in him being able to walk away with the $1B fine.

As per the contract, he can't walk out and pay $1B. He absolutely has to buy.

Of course, everything can be negotiated. But should the other party not want to negotiate, they have the legal means to force him to buy.

The SEC doesn't write laws.

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