Twitter CEO Elon Musk said in an email to Reuters on Friday that hiring law firm Perkins Coie to defend the company in a California federal lawsuit this week was a mistake it would not make again.
Reuters reported earlier that lawyers from Perkins Coie entered
court appearances for Twitter in the case on Wednesday even though Musk has
denounced the firm on the social media platform, including in a tweet last
month related to its past work for former Democratic US presidential nominee
Hillary Clinton.
Musk's email said hiring Perkins Coie was "an error on
the part of a member of the Twitter team."
"Perkins will not be representing Twitter on future
cases," he said.
He did not immediately respond to follow-up questions on
Friday, including whether Perkins Coie will stay on as counsel for Twitter in
at least six other lawsuits predating Musk's ownership. A Perkins Coie
spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk's finger-pointing follows months of internal tensions
over Twitter's legal staffing and priorities since he acquired the company for
$44 billion and took over as CEO in October.
Musk has fired Vijaya Gadde, Twitter's legal affairs and
policy officer, and other senior employees as he seeks to undo what he has
criticised as past censorship and partisan bias at the company.
Twitter has also shaken up its outside legal teams, with
attorneys from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan stepping in for other
firms in several cases.
Musk tweeted on December 8 that Twitter "isn't using
Perkins Coie" as outside counsel and urged other companies to boycott the
firm. He singled out a former Perkins Coie lawyer, Michael Sussmann, who
advised Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign while at the firm.
Sussmann was acquitted in May after denying federal charges
that he falsely told the FBI he was not working on Clinton's behalf when he
gave the agency purported evidence of cyber links between the Trump
Organisation and a Russia-based bank.
"No company should use them until they make amends for
Sussmann's attempt to corrupt a Presidential election," Musk wrote in
December, referring to Perkins Coie.
In May, Musk tweeted that Perkins Coie and another large law
firm were made up of "white-shoe lawyers" who "thrive on
corruption."
The case that Perkins Coie signed on to for Twitter this
week was brought last year by Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who was banned
from the site in 2018.
The San Francisco lawsuit claims social media giants,
corporations and the US government conspired to "unlawfully censor
conservative voices and interfere with American elections." Twitter and
its former CEO Jack Dorsey have denied the claims. © Reuters
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