A former Twitter CEO accused Elon Musk of encouraging threats against a top executive. One theory is that Musk is just trying to push top-paid Twitter employees to quit.

• Elon Musk linked Twitter criticism with company lawyer Vijaya Gadde, who has been involved in content moderation decisions.
• Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo accused Musk in a tweet of trying to make Gadde a target for harassment.

Elon Musk tweeted two references this week to past content-moderation decisions made by one of its top executives, which prompted pushback from the company's former CEO, as well as speculation that he's trying to force higher-paid employees to quit the company he is set to own.

On Tuesday, Politico reported a story on Vijaya Gadde, Twitter's top lawyer, which discussed her status as a lightning rod for conservative criticism, as well as her role in decisions like banning the account of President Donald Trump.

She became a larger target after company decided to limit content related to the 2020 New York Post story about President Biden's son, Hunter, the outlet noted. (Gadde was the one who explained the company's decision to change that policy a few days later on her Twitter account).

Twitter also had suspended the New York Post's account at that time.

"Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate," Musk wrote in the reply.

Musk's tweet prompted a wave of racist online attacks against Gadde, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

"Some used expletives or racist slurs referring to Gadde's Indian heritage, including words like 'curry,' and references to India's caste system," the outlet wrote.

A day later, Musk tweeted a meme that seemed to reference a Joe Rogan podcast on which Gadde appeared in March 2019 to defend Twitter's content moderation policies.

The tweets drew the ire of former CEO Dick Costolo, who tweeted his own reply:

But some observers questioned whether Musk's real motivation behind the tweets was financial.

Twitter employees quitting would make it easier to cut labor costs, which is needed because of his debt-financed acquisition of Twitter, New York Times opinion writer Kara Swisher said in a tweet Wednesday, quoting Costolo's reply to Musk.

Musk and Twitter finalized a deal Monday for him to acquire the company for $44 billion. Musk had to put up $21 billion and use his shares in Tesla as collateral, and if they fell a certain amount, he might have to put up more money. He'll also have to pay about $1 billion in interest payments each year.

Considering all of that, and that Twitter did not have positive cash flow last year, "it's one of the riskiest deals we'll come across," said Joshua White, assistant professor of finance at Vanderbilt University and former financial economist at the SEC.

Though Musk has said he's not worried about the "economics" of buying Twitter, theoretically he still needs to complete interest payments and pay back loans.

He could be considering cutting labor costs to help do that, White agreed.

"He might be hoping some of those employees leave ahead of time," meaning Twitter wouldn't have to pay them severance, even though it's pretty impossible to know if that is his intention, White added.

General employees also seem to be shaken by the rapidly moving deal. "Any sense that an exodus is building is correct," a former Twitter employee told Insider on Tuesday.

If Musk is hoping to encourage employees to leave, beyond what might be expected with a changing of the guard, it would be a major risk, White noted.

"We're in the tightest labor market in decades," he said. "If he runs off some portion of the workforce, that's not something you could just replace overnight."

Twitter didn't respond to a request for comment.