Elon Musk is angling to force Twitter to hand over a group of key employees for questioning — and the legal maneuver could be the mogul’s last and best hope in a desperate fight to scrap his $44 billion takeover deal.

Twitter’s shares have rallied more than 20% over the past month to close at $44.26 on Friday, indicating Wall Street is increasingly confident Musk will be forced to take over Twitter at what now looks like a stratospheric price following a summer rout in tech shares. The surging share price has also reduced the possibility of haggling down Twitter’s price tag.

In the latest sign that Musk is preparing to pay up, the billionaire sold off $6.9 billion of Tesla shares earlier this month, which he admitted he did in “the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through.”

But in a legal gambit that Musk’s team hopes could turn the tide, his lawyers on Tuesday accused Twitter of trying to hide which employees are responsible for evaluating spam accounts on the site — and asked Delaware Judge Kathaleen McCormick earlier on to force Twitter to identify them for questioning, a source close to the case told The Post.

The source said that McCormick is expected to respond to the request this week.