San Francisco:
A federal judge indicated Thursday that he is willing to force Elon Musk to testify again in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's investigation into his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.
Lawyers for the billionaire appeared in a San Francisco courtroom Thursday to urge U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley to rule against the SEC, which wants to force Musk to testify as part of its investigation into his purchase of social media giant Twitter in 2022. Another judge previously ruled in favor of the agency.
The SEC sued Musk in October to force the Tesla and SpaceX CEO to testify after he refused to attend a September interview for the investigation, saying the SEC was trying to “harass” him with a number of subpoenas.
The judge did not make a ruling on Thursday.
“I don't think the deposition subpoena is unreasonable. What I don't know is why does the deposition have to take place at an SEC office?' Corley said this during a hearing in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
The investigation centers on whether Musk violated federal securities laws in 2022 when he bought stock in Twitter, which he later renamed the agency before.
In 2022, Musk provided the SEC with documents for its investigation and also testified via videoconferencing for two half-day sessions in July that year, the SEC said in court documents. Lawyers for the agency have said they have more questions for Musk after receiving new documents and have requested additional testimony.
Musk's attorney, Rachel Frank, an associate at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, told the judge Thursday that the additional testimony would be a “burden” on Musk and take him away from his obligations to shareholders.
The judge asked whether Musk should be exempt from securities laws and further investigation just because he is a “very busy person” who runs multiple companies.
Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Thursday's confrontation is the latest dispute in a yearslong feud between Musk and the top regulator of U.S. markets, dating back to 2018, when he tweeted that he had “secured financing” to take the electric car maker off the market.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)