Entrepreneur Elon Musk has had a rough time since taking over Twitter, now rebranded as X, late last year, and it looks like he is in for more of the same.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has now filed an application for a judge to compel Musk to testify in an ongoing investigation over his purchase of the social-media company.
Filed on October 5, the application asks for a federal judge “to compel Respondent Elon Musk to appear for investigative testimony pursuant to an SEC investigative subpoena.” This follows Musk’s failure to appear and testify at the SEC’s San Francisco office on September 15. The SEC is an independent agency and part of the United States federal government, with the primary purpose of enforcing the law against market manipulation.
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It states he “failed to appear for testimony on September 15, 2023, as required by the investigative subpoena served by the SEC.” Newsweek has emailed X’s press team for comment.
The filing adds that Musk agreed in May 2023 to appear for testimony, but “two days before his scheduled testimony, Musk abruptly notified the SEC staff that he would not appear.”
The document states he had no issues up until that point about attending, but after announcing he would not attend, Musk “attempted to justify his refusal to comply with the subpoena by raising, for the first time, several spurious objections, including an objection to San Francisco as an appropriate testimony location.”
In the United States District Court for the Northern District of California filings by a SEC staff member, it goes on to state that Musk is being investigated for “among other things, potential violations of various provisions of the federal securities laws in connection with (a) Musk’s 2022 purchases of Twitter, Inc. (“Twitter”) stock, and (b) Musk’s 2022 statements and SEC filings relating to Twitter.”
A hearing date has been set for November 9, 2023 on the document. The full SEC filing can be read here, as well as the full 16-page document.
The Tesla CEO finally purchased Twitter on October 28, costing him a sum of $54.20 a share and a combined total of roughly $44 billion.
On October 27, Musk posted on the platform: “The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner without resorting to violence.”
Since then, Musk has been plagued with a mass staff exodus, whether by his hand or by staff choosing to leave, as well as backlash over changes to the verification system and payment options for features in the app.