SAN FRANCISCO, March 20 (Reuters) - A federal jury found

Elon Musk liable on claims he defrauded Twitter shareholders by

trying to drive down the social media company's stock price so

he could renegotiate or back out of a $44 billion takeover in

2022, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.

Damages will be determined later, according to the report.

Lawyers for Musk and the shareholders were not immediately

available for comment.

The verdict from a jury in San Francisco federal court came

in a closely watched trial where Musk, the world's richest

person, was accused of falsely claiming that Twitter

underreported how many fake and spam accounts, known as bots,

were on its platform.

Musk ultimately completed his purchase of Twitter in October

2022 and renamed it X. He has since folded it into his rocket

and space exploration company SpaceX.

The civil trial began on March 2, and jurors began

deliberating on Tuesday.

Musk has often chosen to battle shareholders in court rather

than settle.

This included a 2023 trial in San Francisco over whether he

defrauded Tesla shareholders who claimed to suffer

losses after he falsely claimed in 2018 to have "funding

secured" to take the electric car company private, and

litigation in Delaware over his $139 billion Tesla pay package.

Musk won both cases.

In the latest trial, Twitter shareholders challenged Musk

for having publicly questioned on three occasions after agreeing

in April 2022 to buy Twitter whether the company was overrun

with bots, and perhaps had 20% or more rather than the 5% it

disclosed.

Shareholders cited, among other things, a May 17, 2022,

tweet where Musk said his takeover "cannot go forward" until

Twitter's chief executive proved the bot percentage was less

than 5%.

"He trashed the company. Trashed the executives. And tanked

the stock," the shareholders' lawyer, Mark Molumphy, said during

his closing argument on Tuesday.

Michael Lifrak, a lawyer for Musk, countered that the

billionaire's concern about bots was real, and that speaking out

about the problem did not show Musk committed or intended to

commit fraud.

The lawsuit covers investors who claimed to sell Twitter

shares at prices Musk artificially depressed between May 13 and

October 4, 2022.

Musk is separately in talks to settle a U.S. Securities and

Exchange Commission civil lawsuit accusing him of waiting too

long in 2022 to disclose his initial purchases of Twitter so he

could buy more at low prices before investors saw what he was

doing.

SpaceX bought Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI, which

housed X, in February. The purchase created the world's most

valuable private company, worth about $1.25 trillion at the

time.