Elon Musk has agreed to testify in the SEC’s investigation into his 2022 purchase of Twitter, the social media company now known as X, according to a court filing.
Seven months after the Wall Street regulator sued to compel his testimony, Musk has agreed to appear for no more than five hours of questioning later this year at one of the SEC’s offices, the court filing said.
If Musk needs to reschedule for an emergency, he will either have to obtain a court order or the SEC’s written consent.
The agreement likely caps a monthslong feud between the SEC and Musk over the agency’s attempt to interview the billionaire technology mogul once again as part of a probe into the disclosures around his $44 billion deal to buy X.
The SEC is investigating potential violations of U.S. securities laws regarding Musk’s acquisition of the social media company as well as his statements and SEC filings about Twitter, the agency said in an October 2023 filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Last year, the SEC said Musk canceled previously agreed-upon testimony at the last minute, “raising, for the first time, several spurious objections.”
Musk’s attorneys have argued that the subpoena was “the latest in a litany of duplicative and harassing demands” from the agency looking into Musk and his companies.
Musk and the SEC have regularly clashed over the years. Most notably, the SEC sued Musk in 2018 over the Tesla CEO’s tweets about taking the electric carmaker private for $420 per share — resulting in a settlement that led to Musk’s ouster as Tesla chair.
The Supreme Court recently rejected a challenge to the terms of the settlement from Musk’s attorneys.
