(Bloomberg) -- The US Securities and Exchange Commission called out Elon Musk over his latest “excuse” to skip questioning in a probe of his 2022 acquisition of Twitter: He was attending a SpaceX rocket launch.
The SEC said that on the morning of Sept. 10 when Musk was finally scheduled to complete a deposition in Los Angeles after avoiding previous demands and being ordered by a judge to cooperate, a lawyer for the billionaire informed the agency that he was in Florida.
“His obligations as Chief Technology Officer of SpaceX required he urgently travel to the East Coast yesterday for the high-risk Polaris Dawn launch,” his lawyer told the SEC, according to a filing Friday in San Francisco federal court.
The SEC said Musk stood up three of its attorneys who had flown to LA for the meeting and told US District Judge Jacqueline Corley it intends to seek sanctions against him for his “gamesmanship.”
Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, explained to the judge in the filing that “the timing of the launch was unpredictable due to the weather” and that it was important for the co-founder of the rocket company to be at the Cape Canaveral launch site to make the final call about proceeding with the mission, which led to a successful first commercial spacewalk.
The regulator is seeking information about Musk’s purchases of Twitter stock and statements about his investments before he spent $44 billion to buy the social-media platform, which he later rebranded as X.
Corley in May had ordered Musk to appear again for investigative testimony by the SEC and cautioned that he shouldn’t try to delay or reschedule the deposition absent an emergency that he “did not create and could not avoid.”
Spiro didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case is Securities and Exchange Commission v. Musk, 23-mc-80253, US District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
--With assistance from Chris Dolmetsch.
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