Elon Musk ignored a summons to meet with Paris prosecutors investigating him and his social media company X on Monday morning, deepening a standoff between the French justice system and the US tech giant.
Mr Musk’s no-show came more than two months after French police raided X’s Paris premises as part of a long-running investigation by the Paris prosecutor’s cybercrime unit.
Prosecutors have been investigating X since January 2025 and have talked about looking into seven potential charges under French law, including allegations of complicity in distributing child sexual abuse images, creating content that denies crimes against humanity and fraudulently obtaining data.
On the day of the February raid, Mr Musk was summoned to meet with an investigating judge in April to discuss potential charges. Such an invitation is a regular part of criminal investigations in the French system, during which people in Mr. Musk’s position can “present their position on the facts and the compliance measures they plan to implement,” the prosecutor’s office said at the time.
Mr Musk’s absence was expected after he aggressively denounced the investigation, he called it a “political attack”. The public prosecutor’s office did not announce any immediate legal consequences for his failure to appear. Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
The investigation began amid French concerns about Algorithm X, the digital process that organizes data on the platform, and then widened following further allegations that Grok, X’s AI chatbot, was spreading Holocaust denial claims and sexual deepfakes.
The company’s global government affairs office said after the February raid public statement that he “categorically denies any wrongdoing” and said the investigation “violates French law, circumvents due process and threatens freedom of speech”.
Separately, the company said in January that it had restricted the creation of Grok images to prevent the spread of sexualized images.
In a statement released on Monday, the Paris prosecutor’s office said Mr. Musk’s absence “will not hinder the continuation of the investigation.” She also stated that the judiciary is independent because “the French constitution guarantees the separation of powers”.
The case is at the heart of a wider dispute between US tech companies and European governments over how much those companies should be responsible for the content on their platforms.
The European Union has enacted sweeping digital regulations that threaten tech firms with fines if they fail to police their platforms for illegal content, misinformation and hate speech.
In December, the European Union issued the first fine under its new digital services law and fined X $140 million for violations. The following month, EU regulators announced an investigation into X over the distribution of sexualized images generated by Grok.
French authorities have shown a rare willingness to go after top tech executives and hold them personally accountable for the behavior of platform users.
The issue has become particularly fraught under the Trump administration, which has appeared and acted increasingly aggressively against Europeans, which it has linked to a push to regulate American technology firms.
The dispute reflects a transatlantic disagreement over how and whether to regulate social media.
The Europeans say their actions are an attempt to protect users from offensive content. The Trump administration calls the fines an unfair drain on American companies and says the regulations are an attack on free speech. The United States has very few legal restrictions on speech. In France, there are criminal penalties for hate speech, Holocaust denial and glorification of terrorism.
Ana Castelain contributed reporting.
