Twitter Inc CEO Elon Musk said in an email to Reuters on Friday that hiring the law firm Perkins Coie to defend the company in a California federal lawsuit this week was a mistake it would not repeat.
Reuters previously reported that Perkins Coie’s lawyers appeared in court Twitter in the case on Wednesday, though musk has denounced the firm on the social media platform, including in a tweet last month related to her previous work for former Democratic US presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Musk’s email said the hiring of Perkins Coie was “a mistake on the part of a member of the Twitter team.”
“Perkins will no longer represent Twitter in future cases,” he said.
He did not immediately respond to follow-up questions Friday, including whether Perkins Coie will remain as counsel for Twitter in at least six other lawsuits that took place before Musk’s ownership. A spokesman for Perkins Coie did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk’s pointing follows months of internal tensions over Twitter’s legal staffing and priorities since he bought the company for $44 billion (approx.
Musk has fired Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s legal affairs and policy officer, and other senior staffers as he seeks to undo what he has criticized as past censorship and partisan bias against the company.
Twitter has also shaken up its outside legal teams, with attorneys for Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan representing other firms on multiple cases.
Musk tweeted on Dec. 8 that Twitter “does not use Perkins Coie as an outside consultant” and urged other companies to boycott the firm. He singled out a former attorney for Perkins Coie, Michael Sussmann, who advised Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign while at the firm.
Sussmann was acquitted in May after denying federal allegations that he falsely told the FBI he was not working on Clinton’s behalf when he presented the agency with alleged evidence of cyber ties between the Trump organization and a Russia-based agency bank submitted.
“No company should use them until they make amends for Sussmann’s attempt to corrupt a presidential election,” Musk wrote in December, citing Perkins Coie.
In May, Musk tweeted that Perkins Coie and another major law firm are made up of “white lawyers” who “live off corruption.”
The case, which Perkins Coie filed for Twitter this week, was brought up last year by Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who was banned from the site in 2018.
The San Francisco lawsuit alleges social media giants, corporations and the US government conspired to “unlawfully censor conservative voices and disrupt American elections.” Twitter and its former CEO Jack Dorsey have denied the claims.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
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