Automattic Fires Back At WP Engine's Sanctions Motion Over Deleted Messages

Matt Mullenweg and Automattic push back hard against allegations of evidence destruction, calling WP Engine's legal maneuver a "desperate attempt" to win without proving its case.

The legal battle between Automattic and WP Engine escalated sharply when Automattic filed a late-night court response and blog post disputing WP Engine's July 28 motion for sanctions — a motion that accuses Matt Mullenweg of deliberately destroying case-relevant communications on encrypted messaging platforms.

The dispute has become one of the most closely watched conflicts in the WordPress ecosystem. What began as a public falling-out at a WordPress conference has since spiraled into federal litigation involving trademark counterclaims, allegations of bad-faith conduct, and now accusations of evidence tampering. The stakes are high for both companies and for the broader WordPress community — a community that underpins a significant share of the commercial web.

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The Allegations Against Mullenweg and Automattic

What WP Engine Is Claiming

WP Engine filed its motion for sanctions on July 28, claiming Mullenweg and Automattic destroyed evidence stored on Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp. The motion requests serious consequences from the court, including dismissal of Automattic's trademark infringement counterclaims and an award of attorney's fees.

Central to WP Engine's argument is a public post Mullenweg made on X on September 21, 2024. In that post he reportedly wrote:

"For the people sending me stuff from inside companies, please do not do it on your work device. Use a personal phone, Signal with disappearing messages, etc."

WP Engine's motion argues that statement is evidence Mullenweg "actively steered communications about WPE into channels designed to leave no record." The motion concludes that "Mr. Mullenweg's relevant communications during the most critical time period in this case were not preserved, and Defendants lied about it, both to WPE and to this Court."

Those are serious allegations. If the court agrees, Automattic could lose its counterclaims entirely before a trial even begins — a significant legal setback that would reshape the trajectory of the entire dispute.

Why Spoliation Claims Carry Such Weight

Courts treat allegations of evidence destruction — legally referred to as spoliation — with particular seriousness. When a party is found to have intentionally destroyed relevant evidence, judges have broad discretion to impose sanctions ranging from adverse inference instructions to outright dismissal of claims. WP Engine is pursuing the more severe end of that spectrum, which signals how aggressively it intends to contest Automattic's counterclaims before the case ever reaches a jury.

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Automattic's Defence and the Evidence It Cites

How Automattic Is Fighting Back

Automattic's response was swift and unambiguous. In a blog post titled "Wrong Again," the company called the sanctions motion "a desperate attempt to get sanctions and other extreme remedies because Matt used ephemeral messaging in personal communications with romantic partners having nothing to do with this case."

The company also stated that WP Engine "cannot identify a single missing message about anything having to do with this case." Automattic says 1.5 million documents were reviewed during discovery and five of Mullenweg's personal devices were imaged by investigators — a level of disclosure the company argues directly contradicts any suggestion of deliberate concealment.

The formal court filing pressed further on the September 21 X post that WP Engine cited as damning evidence. According to the filing, Mullenweg testified under oath that his Signal account was tied to an unpublished personal phone number and was configured to prevent unknown users from finding or messaging him. He testified the account "wouldn't have been able to receive" unsolicited messages and that he does not believe he received a single message in response to his public post.

The filing directly challenged WP Engine's characterisation of events:

"The distance between the motion and the record is not an ordinary disagreement about evidence. WP Engine describes a defendant hiding behind vanishing messages, a preservation effort that never occurred, and evidence destroyed beyond recovery. None of that is true."

What the Discovery Process Revealed

The scale of Automattic's disclosed documentation is notable. Producing 1.5 million documents and submitting to forensic device imaging represents a substantial discovery effort — one that Automattic argues is fundamentally incompatible with the narrative of a defendant actively suppressing evidence. Whether the court finds that argument persuasive will likely depend on whether any identifiable gaps in communication records exist, rather than the volume of material produced.

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The Broader Impact on WordPress and the Ecosystem

How the Conflict Began and Where It Stands

This legal confrontation did not emerge in a vacuum. Mullenweg initiated the original dispute by going public against WP Engine at a WordPress conference in what observers described as a "nuclear" move. The fallout has extended well beyond the courtroom.

WordPress has reportedly lost market share beginning shortly after the conflict became public. That trend raises substantive questions about whether prolonged corporate disputes between major ecosystem players can erode user confidence in a platform that powers a substantial portion of the web. For businesses and developers whose operations depend on WordPress infrastructure, the uncertainty created by this litigation carries real operational implications. Those running commercial sites on WordPress should ensure their WordPress website security practices and platform dependencies are not exposed to risk from ecosystem instability.

Automattic amplified its court filing on social media writing: "In a desperate attempt to get sanctions because they can't prove their case, @wpengine says @photomatt destroyed evidence. Want to know what really happened?" One response to the post captured the fatigue many observers feel: "More Matt drama 🎭"

What Remains Unresolved

The court has not yet ruled on WP Engine's motion for sanctions. How the judge responds could shape the remainder of the trial and determine whether Automattic's trademark counterclaims survive.

Both sides are now deeply invested in controlling the narrative as much as the legal outcome. WP Engine wants the court to see a pattern of deliberate obstruction. Automattic wants the court to see a company making baseless claims because it cannot prove its underlying case on the merits.

For businesses evaluating their reliance on WordPress-based tools — including those using WordPress CRM plugins to manage customer relationships — the commercial uncertainty generated by this dispute is worth monitoring closely. Vendor stability and ecosystem health are legitimate factors in technology stack decisions.

The Distance Between a Licensing Dispute and a Federal Courtroom

What is clear is that this dispute shows no signs of resolution. The messy public conflict that started at a conference stage has now reached federal court filings debating the contents of a developer's private messages with romantic partners — a detail that underscores just how far this fight has travelled from its origins in a WordPress licensing disagreement.

For a broader understanding of how disputes like this are being tracked across the legal and technology landscape, the Electronic Frontier Foundation provides ongoing coverage of digital rights, platform governance, and technology litigation that offers useful context for cases of this nature.

The outcome of WP Engine's sanctions motion remains one of the most consequential pending decisions in the WordPress ecosystem — and one that businesses, developers, and platform stakeholders would do well to follow.