LOS ANGELES - Elon Musk has been ordered by a federal court to answer further questions from lawyers about his takeover of Twitter - now called X on Thursday. And the financial world has one question: Will he be there? Last month, he was a no-show for a court ordered appearance at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) office in Los Angeles. Thursday’s planned interview is part of a high-level investigation into whether Mr Musk waited too long to disclose he was building up a stake in Twitter before acquiring the social media platform in 2022. The billionaire has previously said this delay was a mistake. The nation’s top securities regulator is trying to force him to appear on Thursday by calling for possible sanctions. For the 10 September court hearing, the SEC said it spent thousands of dollars to dispatch three lawyers - two from San Francisco and another from Washington DC -so they could take a sworn deposition from the billionaire tech mogul. But three hours before the appointment, Mr Musk’s lawyers notified the SEC that he would not be able to appear. Mr Musk, his lawyers wrote in a declaration, had urgently travelled to the East Coast a day earlier for a “high-risk” launch by his rocket company SpaceX. But SpaceX had posted about the timing of the scheduled launch two days before Mr Musk’s deposition date. And a day ahead of the meeting, he told interviewers at a conference that he planned to travel to Florida “if the weather is holding up” for the launch. The SEC says he did not inform them of those plans. The government lawyers only learned of the post and interview later. They rescheduled the suddenly cancelled meeting and then they asked a federal court to make sure Mr Musk appeared. Mr Musk has given two depositions since the SEC began looking into his $44bn (£34bn) purchase of Twitter in 2022. The agency has said in legal filings that it is probing whether his stock purchases before he bought the company outright and statements he made about those investments broke securities laws. But Mr Musk refused to give testimony a third time, with his lawyers sending a letter to the SEC accusing it of harassment. In October, the SEC asked a court to order him to provide more testimony. Mr Musk’s reason for missing last month’s appointment “smacks of gamesmanship,” SEC lawyers wrote in a 20 September filing.
They asked US District Judge Jacqueline Corley to impose a penalty on him if he skipped the next meeting, arguing it was needed to deter him from “failing to show up” on Thursday. Mr Musk was supposed to seek written consent from the SEC or an order from the court to reschedule, they added.
Replying in his own filing, his lawyer Alex Spiro of the law firm Quinn Emanuel, said his client and his companies have cooperated with the SEC in this investigation and several others. “In this investigation alone, Mr Musk has produced hundreds of documents, he has sat for testimony twice, his wealth manager has sat for testimony three times, and other individuals connected to Mr Musk have also sat for testimony, all without rescheduling or cancelling any of those testimonies,” Mr Spiro wrote.
Mr Musk’s lawyers say they too had travelled to Los Angeles to be at his deposition last month and “immediately notified the SEC of the emergency”. The SEC declined to comment when approached by the BBC. But in a court filing, SEC lawyer Robin Andrews asked US District Judge Jacqueline Corley to take a hard line against the billionaire.
“The Court must make clear that gamesmanship and delay tactics must cease,” Mr Andrews wrote.