Elon Musk's lawyer for Twitter is done with him

Negotiations between Twitter and the Federal Trade Commission do not appear to be going well after the FTC opened an investigation into Twitter due to privacy concerns. It was disclosed this week that Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, was denied a meeting with the commission's chair, Lina Khan, last year. 

According to numerous persons with knowledge of the situation who spoke to The New York Times, senior Twitter lawyer Christian Dowell, who was heavily involved in those FTC conversations, has since quit.

Dowell joined Twitter in 2020 and advanced in the company after a number of Twitter's senior attorneys left the company or were dismissed once Musk gained control of it in the fall of 2022, according to Bloomberg. Dowell most recently supervised Twitter's product legal counsel, though he hasn't officially announced his resignation yet. 

According to people who spoke with the Times, in that capacity, he was "intimately involved" in the FTC negotiations and coordinated Twitter's responses to FTC questions.

According to AP News, the FBI opened its current investigation into Twitter's operations after Elon Musk started mass layoffs that appeared to raise fresh security issues. According to The Times, the FTC's inquiry grew more serious after security professionals left Twitter due to worries that Musk might be infringing on the agency's privacy injunction.

A few media outlets have reported that Twitter responds to requests for comments with a poop emoji.

It's unclear who, if the Times' report is true, will succeed Dowell as Twitter's senior product counsel in charge of the FTC negotiations. The Times said that Musk recently ceased depending on his personal attorney to weigh in at Twitter, but that he appears to still seek advice from attorneys at SpaceX, one of his other firms.

While the FTC investigation is still ongoing, Musk's layoffs appear to have guaranteed that Twitter's legal problems will only get worse, Ashley Belanger from Ars Technica said. Twitter is not only pursuing legal action against the alleged ex-employee who leaked Twitter source code on Github; it is also currently engaged in individual arbitration with hundreds if not thousands, of ex-employees who were denied the opportunity to join a class-action lawsuit over allegedly unpaid severance and lost wages.