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” fo.
