Judge agrees Musk’s buddy David Sacks is fighting a subpoena for podcast clout

Lawyers for Twitter argued that the main reason for David Sachs to try to fight a subpoena filed in their lawsuit against Elon Musk is because he said he would do so in a podcast, and in a ruling issued on Friday, the judge agreed on.

Chancellor Kathleen St. Jude McCormick (pdf):

In an apparent effort to keep Sacks’ promise to his podcast listeners, the movants created the burden they now complain about.

The cancellation request was denied.

That closes the side story of the main event of Twitter suing Elon Musk for trying to back out of their $44 billion acquisition deal after the company’s lawyers called Sachs a “potential investor in the merger that Musk wants to escape “. Sachs is a venture capitalist and, along with Musk, is a member of the so-called “PayPal Mafia” made up of former players of the company.

As Elizabeth Lopato explained earlier this week, Sachs responded to the subpoena during an episode of his All-In podcast, saying, “I have no involvement in this thing, but they sent me the broadest subpoena ever. That’s like 30 pages of requests. And now I have to hire a lawyer to get this thing overturned.

What happened next was described by Twitter’s lawyers in their motion to oppose the motion: “Tonight he tweeted a virtual middle finger to ‘Twitter lawyers,’ then a video of a man urinating on a subpoena while yelling profanities to a cheering crowd.”

While this strategy might work if you want some internet influence, it didn’t help his case. Twitter’s attorneys filed additional subpoenas covering Delaware and California, and attorneys representing Sachs based their request for reversal on the argument that the move added an unnecessary burden to him.

Judge McCormick ruled that Twitter had “reasonable concerns” based on Sachs’ own actions and denied his request. “Under other circumstances, I might consider completely duplicate subpoenas served for such tactical purposes problematic. Where, as here, the recipient of the subpoena tweets the middle finger to subpoena lawyers and a video of someone urinating on subpoenas, it bothers me less,” McCormick wrote.