> The goal is to sway public opinion against Musk.

At this point anyone with half a brain, no make that a single functioning brain cell, knows that Musk has fucked up and is trying to welch on the deal.

Public opinion of reasonable people was already against Musk.

Do you really think Musk still wants to own Twitter for the agreed upon price?

If the bot count really is under 5% as per Twitter’s claim, yes.

But that’s unlikely, considering what could be observed over the past weeks.

First you'll have to show where Twitter made that claim.

Your phrasing here has been Musk's phrasing on this subject, which is interesting, as it's a different metric than what Twitter files publicly with the SEC.

In this context, why would public opinion matter?

Public opinion matters in all contexts, as rules and court decisions about rules are made by people, who invariantly are members of the public.