SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A senior lawyer for Twitter tendered his resignation Thursday, four people familiar with the matter said, becoming the latest in a string of executives to leave the company since Elon Musk took over nearly six months ago.
The lawyer, Christian Dowell, rose to the top of Twitter’s legal department in recent months after the company’s legal leaders resigned or were fired by Musk. Dowell was intimately involved in Twitter’s recent negotiations with the Federal Trade Commission, two people familiar with those discussions said.
The FTC, which currently oversees Twitter, is investigating claims by a former executive that the company has had security problems. The commission accelerated its investigation after the sudden resignations of three Twitter executives responsible for privacy, security and compliance. They left Twitter in November, shortly after Musk acquired the company.
The agency’s investigation into Twitter has intensified in recent months and is looking at whether the company has the resources to follow through on its privacy promises after mass layoffs and resignations.
Mr. Dowell did not respond to a request for comment. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter
- A new label for NPR: Twitter added a hashtag to the public radio network’s account on the social network, designating the station “US State Affiliated Media.” NPR denounced the move as “unacceptable.”
- Removal of check marks: Twitter users had anticipated a reckoning as check marks denoting verified user status would be removed. They are still waiting.
- FTC Investigation: Elon Musk tried to engage with the Federal Trade Commission as the agency stepped up an investigation into Twitter’s data and privacy practices, the documents show, but was rebuffed.
- Source code leak: Parts of the underlying computer code that Twitter runs on have been leaked online, a rare and major exposure of intellectual property.
Musk sought to meet with some of the FTC commissioners in recent months to discuss the investigation, two people familiar with his efforts said. Only Christine Wilson, the outgoing Republican commissioner, accepted his request. Mr. Dowell coordinated Twitter responses to FTC inquiries and was involved in organizing the meeting, those people said.
Ms. Wilson resigned from her position last Friday. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece about her decision to resign, she said that Lina Khan, the chair of the FTC, “disregarded the rule of law and due process and the way senior FTC officials empower her.”
Mr. Dowell joined Twitter in 2020 after stints on the Q&A site Quora and Facebook, and focused on product issues before being promoted in December to become Twitter’s head of product legal oversight.
Mr. Dowell’s departure follows a series of departures by legal and compliance executives at the social media company. The day Musk closed his deal with Twitter in late October, he fired Vijaya Gadde, then the company’s chief legal officer, and his general counsel, Sean Edgett.
In December, Musk fired James A. Baker, a Twitter lawyer and former FBI general counsel, after Baker played a role in reviewing internal communications about the company’s decision to suppress a New York Post story on 2020 on Hunter Biden. laptop. The billionaire also cut his personal lawyer from working at Twitter and rotated to other legal help from SpaceX, the rocket company he founded and operates.
Beyond the FTC investigation, Twitter is facing a series of lawsuits over unpaid bills for software, vendor services, and rent. Former employees have also sued the company, alleging that it violated labor laws during the layoffs.
Twitter also sought legal action against an unknown person who leaked portions of its source code online and obtained a subpoena last month forcing GitHub, the collaborative software development platform that hosted the code, to release information about the person. .
This week, a German federal agency launched proceedings to fine Twitter for what it said was the company’s failure to respond to complaints of illegal content. “This is the first time I’ve heard of this,” Mr. Musk tweeted on Tuesday about the German court proceedings.
Dowell’s resignation comes as Musk said he was building a “powerful litigation team” at Tesla, his electric car maker. On Tuesday, the tweeted that this team would go “after Wall St short sellers, certain law firms, and (sometimes) corrupt regulators who are the real evil.”
Several Twitter executives have tendered their resignations, only to return to work at the company, and it’s unclear whether Mr. Dowell might return to Twitter at some point.
Robin Wheeler, a sales executive, quit in November but came back and stayed on for a few more weeks. It was not immediately clear who at Twitter might inherit Dowell’s legal responsibilities.
