Elon Musk has filed claims against Twitter as he fights the tech company’s lawsuit demanding he be held to its $44 billion buyout deal. Musk has legally defended Twitter’s claim that it is contractually bound to complete the deal it signed in April, the Chancery Court in the state of Delaware said in a statement on Friday. The Tesla boss won over Twitter’s board with an offer of $54.20 per share. But on July 8, he announced that he was “terminating” their agreement over allegations that the company had misled him about its fake and spammy accounts. Twitter sued days later, calling the fake account claims a distraction and saying Musk was bound by the merger agreement to close the deal at $54.20 a share. Musk’s 164-page counterclaim was filed as “confidential,” but court rules require him to file a public version of the dossier with sensitive information redacted. Magistrate Kathaleen St J McCormick ordered a five-day trial to begin on October 17, instead of two weeks in February next year as requested by the billionaire. Twitter, whose share price closed at $41.61 on Friday, stood by its estimates of the accounts being run by software “bots” rather than humans, and argued that Musk was making excuses to back out of the contract. The social media giant accused the billionaire of seeking massive amounts of data that are irrelevant to the main issue of the case: whether he had breached the contract. McCormick on Friday appeared to anticipate the controversy. “This order does not resolve specific discovery disputes, including the propriety of any requests for large data sets,” the judge said. The social media platform urged shareholders to approve the deal, setting a vote on the merger for September 13. “We are committed to closing the merger at the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk,” Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and chairman Bret Taylor said in a copy of a letter to investors. Musk was also sued on Friday by Luigi Crispo, who owns 5,500 shares of Twitter. Crispo asked the court to order the billionaire to close the deal, arguing that he breached his fiduciary duty to Twitter shareholders and award damages for damages he caused.