Elon Musk failed to testify in an investigation into his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. Now the SEC wants sanctions

() – The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) intends to seek sanctions against Elon Musk for failing to appear to testify in an investigation related to his acquisition of Twitter, now called X, the regulator said in a court filing on Friday.

Earlier this year, a federal judge ordered Musk to testify as part of the SEC’s investigation into the billionaire’s $44 billion acquisition. The agency is examining whether Musk followed the law in disclosing his Twitter stock purchases and whether his statements related to the deal were misleading.

After some initial scheduling adjustments, the parties agreed that Musk would testify on Sept. 10, and SEC lawyers flew to Los Angeles to take his testimony, according to Friday’s court filing. But three hours before his testimony was set to begin, Musk’s lawyer told the SEC that his client, who also runs SpaceX, had to urgently travel to the East Coast for the launch of the Polaris Dawn mission and would be unable to attend the testimony or reschedule it for the next day, according to the filing.

The two sides then struggled to find a time to reschedule testimony before settling on a date in early October, according to the document.

The SEC alleges that Musk violated a court order requiring Musk to “seek the ‘written consent of the SEC or an order of the Court’ to modify the date of his testimony,” which the SEC says he failed to do before failing to appear on Sept. 10.

“Musk’s excuse itself smacks of manipulation,” the SEC said in the filing. “SpaceX had already announced that it was targeting a Tuesday morning launch two days earlier… As CEO of the company, Musk likely already knew by then that SpaceX was targeting the morning of his SEC testimony for the launch.”

He continued: “Despite this advance knowledge, Musk did not notify the SEC of his intention to attend the launch until three hours before his testimony was set to begin, and after the SEC had spent thousands of dollars to fly three lawyers to Los Angeles.”

Musk has previously tried to fight efforts to testify again at the investigation, saying he has already done so twice.

The SEC asked the court to impose “significant conditional damages” if Musk fails to appear on the new testimony date in October. The SEC also said it intends to file a motion for sanctions against Musk to recover his travel costs for the canceled testimony and for other compensation.

In a response document, Musk’s lawyers argued that “Court intervention is not necessary, as the parties have already agreed to a new date for testimony… Mr. Musk is already under an order from this Court to appear ‘unless an emergency occurs that (Mr. Musk) did not create and could not prevent.’”

The filing represents just the latest flare-up in a long-running tension between Musk and the SEC, which began in 2018 when the agency sued him for falsely tweeting that he had “secured funding” to take Tesla private.