Elon Musk's latest stunt: Calling for the SEC to investigate Twitter's user numbers

So does Elon Musk want to buy Twitter or not? This morning, the company's potential new owner insisted (in a tweet, of course) that the $44 billion deal he "cannot move forward" until he sees evidence about its active user numbers.

In need of current Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal and former CEO Jack Dorsey failing to appear, Musk has -- jokingly -- tweeted another recurring character from his 24/7 circus to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Pulled in, asked them to inquire.

In case you forgot, the people at the SEC are the "bastards" whom Musk previously accused of infringing on his rights to freedom of expression, though he hasn't said the only thing in the past.

His feud with him has focused his efforts to enforce a consent decree agreed in 2018 over "funding secure" tweets about taking Tesla private. Of course, you can add to Musk and his brother's investigation on potential insider trading and even their failure to make timely disclosures about how much Twitter stock they had acquired prior to bidding for the company.

Joke or not, Twitter has had trouble with accurate metrics and recently admitted that it has been outnumbering daily users for years. Twitter's CEO makes estimates about the amount of bot activity included in its daily active users (DAU) metrics; However, this now puts Parag Agarwal at an impasse that Musk can use to lower his price for the company or exit the deal altogether.