A former Twitter employee alleged the social media platform lacked the resources to measure the full scope of bot accounts, potentially bolstering billionaire Elon Musk’s case against the company.

CNN and The Washington Post reported Peiter Zatko, Twitter’s former head of security, last month alerted politicians and regulators he was told by the head of site integrity in early 2021 the company did not know how many bots and spam accounts were on the platform.

The disgruntled former employee also claimed Twitter ignored security vulnerabilities.

Zatko was fired from Twitter earlier this year.

The Washington Post reported Twitter keeps several internal tallies of spam and bots beyond what it publicly reported.

Musk and Twitter are set to go to trial in October in a dispute over the billionaire’s abandoned bid to acquire the company.

A member of Musk’s legal team told Bloomberg it had summoned Zatko to appear and suggested his departure, along with others, was “curious”.

Bloomberg also published a letter from Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to employees disputing Zatko’s claims.

Musk cited a lack of detail from Twitter regarding the number of bots as his primary reason for backing out of the $44 billion acquisition.