The craziest part of Musk v. Altman happened while the jury was out of the room

Okay, I am not a lawyer so I only understood about half of what just happened. But I am fairly sure, given the context, that Elon Musk’s lawyers may have just fucked up big. Jared “ James Brickhouse ” Birchall, Musk’s finance guy and all-around fixer, took the stand after Musk today. Most of his testimony was dull and seemed to exist primarily to get some documents read into the record, which sucks but is a normal part of sitting through trials. But at the very end of his boring testimony something interesting happened. I believe we all got a surprise, something that rarely happens in courtrooms. The lawyer conducting his direct examination was passed a note by another member of the team, and asked Birchall what was apparently contained on the note: was he familiar with the xAI bid for OpenAI’s assets? “Sam Altman was on both sides of the table.” “As I recall, a lawyer we were working with had asked the attorney general of California to ensure that in their fiduciary duty, proper value was being given to the assets of the nonprofit of OpenAI,” Birchall said. In his understanding, there was a negotiation “between Sam Altman and himself on both sides of the table, the for-profit and the non-profit, attempting to discount the value of the non-profit assets. …