Elon Musk is scheduled to appear in an interview with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawyers Thursday regarding his acquisition of Twitter shares when it was still a public company.
Musk was meant to appear for an interview with SEC lawyers on Sept. 10 but canceled the same day. Just hours before the scheduled meeting, his attorneys sent a letter informing the commission’s lawyers he wouldn’t be able to attend because he had to be in Florida for a SpaceX launch.
Thursday’s makeup interview is part of an SEC investigation into the minority stake Musk amassed in Twitter in the months leading up to his decision to buy the company. The SEC alleges Musk did not disclose the position he was building early enough.
Musk first started buying up shares in Twitter (since renamed as X) in January of 2022. By March of that year he owned 9.2%, making him the largest individual shareholder in the company, according to SEC filings. In April, Musk offered to buy the company for $54.20 a share for a total value of $44 billion. Several months later, in October, the deal closed, with Musk taking over the social media company.
The takeover drew scrutiny from the SEC, which had concerns about the timing of Musk’s disclosures made in the spring of 2022, according to a court filing submitted by the SEC in October 2023. Through a spokesperson the SEC declined to comment. Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, did not respond to a request for comment.
In a court filing, Spiro pointed to other instances of his client’s participation throughout the investigation. “Mr. Musk has produced hundreds of documents, he has sat for testimony twice,” Spiro wrote.
Musk’s missed interview in September was the second time he skipped out on SEC lawyers. In September 2023, the SEC asked the District Court of Northern California to issue a subpoena to Musk to compel him to sit for an interview after he didn’t show up to a scheduled meeting, according to court filings.
After he canceled in September, SEC lawyers asked District Judge Jacqueline Corley to start imposing penalties on Musk if he missed Thursday’s meeting. The SEC said Musk’s latest instance of truancy “smacks of gamesmanship,” according to a court filing.
Regulators took issue with the fact Musk had publicly announced he would be in Florida for the SpaceX launch the day before it took place. Yet he only informed the SEC he wouldn’t be able to attend in the early morning hours of the day of the scheduled interview.
“Despite this advance knowledge, Musk did not notify the SEC of his intent to attend the launch until three hours before his testimony was to begin, and after the SEC spent thousands of dollars to fly three attorneys to Los Angeles,” according to court documents filed by the SEC’s lawyers.
