Elon Musk agrees to meet SEC after ditching meeting for rocket launch

By Rachel Graf

Elon Musk’s lawyers assured a judge in San Francisco that the mercurial billionaire will show up next week to be questioned by securities regulators investigating his 2022 acquisition of Twitter Inc., after Musk ditched an earlier meeting to attend a rocket launch.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking information about Musk’s purchases of Twitter stock and statements he made about his investments before buying the social media platform for $44 billion. Regulators sent Musk a letter asking about the delayed disclosure of his Twitter stake.

In July 2022, Musk testified twice in the case, but he’s now failed to show up two times for follow-up questioning, according to the SEC. The most recent was earlier this month, when he attended the launch of a rocket by SpaceX, one of his companies. The move apparently surprised his own lawyers, who had traveled to Los Angeles to observe the scheduled testimony.

Musk’s lawyers “clearly don’t have control over their client,” SEC attorney Robin Andrews told the judge at a hearing Friday.

One of the billionaire’s attorneys, Alex Spiro, is defending New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was arraigned Friday in a Manhattan federal court on corruption charges. The judge overseeing the SEC case said Friday that Musk won’t be able to delay next week’s testimony — now scheduled for Oct. 3 — even if Spiro is “otherwise engaged” with Adams.

The case is Securities and Exchange Commission v. Musk, 23-mc-80253, US District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).