The Elon Musk plan to purchase Twitter continues to take twists and turns, with the latest seemingly being a potential preemptive move to back out of the deal, which could cost the Tesla and SpaceX co-founder $44 billion if it still goes through.

Reported by Axios, Musk’s lawyers have sent a letter to the Twitter general council, Vijaya Gadde, earlier today. Said letter makes mention of the fact that Elon Musk reserves the right to pull the plug on the deal at any time.

“Based on Twitter’s behavior to date, and the company’s latest correspondence in particular, Mr. Musk believes the company is actively resisting and thwarting his information rights (and the company’s corresponding obligations) under the merger agreement,” explains the letter, on file with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

“This is a clear material breach of Twitter’s obligations under the merger agreement and Mr. Musk reserves all rights resulting therefrom, including his right not to consummate the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement,” it adds.

Whether there is indeed validity to the claim that Musk reserves such rights is unclear at this stage, but given that he suspended the deal over differing opinions regarding spam/bot numbers on Twitter, anything is possible at this stage.

Many have suggested that Musk is trying to negotiate down from his initially accepted offer of $54.20 a share, and this stunt might be the latest in those efforts.

For now, as it currently stands, should Musk indeed cancel his agreement to purchase Twitter, he could face a fine of up to $1 billion for doing so. Whether he is willing to take such a loss given the growing voices in opposition of the deal, as well as increasing regulator enquiries, remains to be seen.

Either way, this could be the start of one of the biggest tech deals in history failing to get over the line.