After months of loudly protesting a subpoena, Elon Musk has once again agreed to testify in the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation into his acquisition of Twitter (now called X).

Musk tried to avoid testifying by arguing that the SEC had deposed him twice before, telling a US district court in California that the most recent subpoena was "the latest in a long string of SEC abuses of its investigative authority.”

But the court did not agree that Musk testifying three times in the SEC probe was either “abuse” or “overly burdensome.” Especially since the SEC has said it’s seeking a follow-up deposition after receiving “thousands of new documents” from Musk and third parties over the past year since his last depositions. And according to an order requiring Musk and the SEC to agree on a deposition date from US district judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, “Musk’s lament does not come close to meeting his burden of proving ‘the subpoena was issued in bad faith or for an improper purpose.’”

“Under Musk’s theory of reasonableness, the SEC must wait to depose a percipient witness until it has first gathered all relevant documents,” Corley wrote in the order. “But the law does not support that theory. Nor does common sense. In an investigation, the initial depositions can help an agency identify what documents are relevant and need to be requested in the first place.”

  • deltapi@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Genuinely ignorant here, please explain.

    Why are they investigating at all? Didn’t Musk basically Finance himself in the Abacus when he bought twitter?

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      FTA:

      The SEC has been probing Musk’s Twitter stock purchases to determine if he violated a securities law that requires disclosures within 10 days from anyone who buys more than a 5 percent stake in a company. Musk missed that deadline by 11 days, as he amassed close to a 10 percent stake, and a proposed class action lawsuit from Twitter shareholders has suggested that he intentionally missed the deadline to keep Twitter stock prices artificially low while preparing for his Twitter purchase.

      • deltapi@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Ah, understood. Thank you.

        Seems to me the first part of the violation is clear, fine him and be done with it.

        Twitter users who think they could have milked him for more…I think they already got a better deal than fair market value.

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          It gets into stock manipulation, and that’s a bit more of an investigation.

          Simply missing a deadline is one thing.

          Missing the deadline while buying more because that filing would likely trigger a jump in price… is a different thing.