Musk agrees to testify in SEC’s Twitter probe

Elon Musk has agreed to testify before the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in its investigation into his 2022 purchase of Twitter, now known as X, after a monthslong legal battle. 

The billionaire tech mogul will sit for a deposition at one of the agency’s offices for no more than five hours, according to a Thursday court filing.

The SEC sued Musk last October to compel him to testify, as it investigated whether any federal security laws had been violated in connection with Musk’s 2022 purchase of Twitter stock and his statements and SEC filings related to the social media company. 

Musk initially sat for two half-day sessions with the SEC in 2022. A year later, the agency asked him to sit for another session, but Musk refused to appear, prompting the latest legal battle. 

A magistrate judge ruled in February that Musk had to sit for the deposition, but she referred the issue to a district judge after he questioned her jurisdiction. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley affirmed the earlier ruling this month, ordering Musk to testify. 

Musk had argued that the SEC’s latest demand for testimony was unreasonable after sitting with the agency twice before. However, Corley dismissed this argument as “unpersuasive,” noting that the SEC had received “thousands of new documents” following the first two sessions. 

She also rejected Musk’s argument that the agency’s senior counsel did not have the authority to issue the subpoena seeking his testimony. 

Musk, who has a long and rocky history with the SEC, suffered another legal setback last month when the Supreme Court declined to hear his challenge to a 2018 settlement agreement with the agency that requires lawyers to approve some of his public posts about Tesla.