Elon Musk contended that Twitter Inc’s decision to pay millions of dollars to a whistleblower it had fired gives the world’s richest person another justification for terminating his $44 billion agreement to buy the social media company. In a Friday letter to Twitter, lawyers for Musk said Twitter’s failure to seek his consent before paying $7.75 million to Peiter Zatko and his lawyers violated the merger agreement, which restricted when Twitter could make such payments. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Origen: Musk says Twitter whistleblower payment is another reason to scrap merger