He doesn't - I think the general view by most people is that he is stalling but who actually knows? I get downvoted because the conclusion that he won't be forced to buy Twitter is not one people want to hear - and I get it.

Elon is not exactly the most strategic thinker and I don't think he thinks at all most of the time.

Even in his letter, he states he wants to go ahead with the merger agreement as long as Twitter stops proceeding with the litigation. The letter was also clear that he isn't waiving any defenses he may have by agreeing to proceed with the agreement which seems to anticipate that Twitter will be suing him.

But per the merger agreement, he doesn't actually qualify for 12bn in margin financing anymore. 12.5bn of the money was coming from lenders on a margin loan at a 20% ETV rate. That means he has to put up 62.5ish bn (if my math is right) in Tesla stock as collateral.

At the time of the deal, Elon had this. Elon does not have even close to it now. This means he hasn't secured 12.5bn in margin financing per the terms of the deal and per the deal, this would be cause to terminate it and Musk would owe Twitter damages.

Theoretically, Musk could take a much smaller margin loan and up his cash amount on close but this comes with a few problems.

At the current Tesla price, I believe Musk could get roughly around 7bn in margin funding. This means he would have to add 5bn in cash to the amount of cash he needs to provide @ close of the deal (by selling Tesla stock).

The issue with this is that this extra sale of the stock lowers the price and when the price lowers, that means the amount he borrows on margin also lowers and it becomes a bit circular (he can't get enough on margin so he needs to sell shares to get cash but as he sells shares for cash, it drops the price and get can get less on margin).

Essentially, the margin financing is unlikely to happen.

So great, force him to sell an extra 12.5bn in Tesla stock instead - on top of the cash amount he agreed to provide at the close deal. The issue here is he has a fiduciary to Tesla as a board member and selling that much would certainly give Tesla a cause of action against him.

If he was that motivated, he could do this and accept the risk of Tesla suing him but it is unlikely a court would force that position on Tesla (and Tesla shareholders).

So the likely guess is that Elon really doesn't want to be deposed and wants to stall as long as possible but this is speculative.