Elon Musk has been ordered to testify for a 3rd time within the probe into his takeover of Twitter, now often called X.

US Justice of the Peace decide Laurel Beeler issued an order on Saturday night time after Musk failed to seem earlier than the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on the organized date.

The decide mentioned Musk "did not appear" and "resists the subpoena on the grounds the SEC's investigation is baseless and harassing and seeks irrelevant information".

The SEC sued the Tesla proprietor in October to compel him to cooperate in its probe of the $44bn (£35bn) Twitter takeover.

Officials need to hear his proof on whether or not he acted lawfully when filling out paperwork on Twitter inventory purchases and instructed the reality when making statements concerning the deal.

According to the order by the California federal court docket, Musk doesn't need to seem as he believes the regulator has leaked data to the media.

This could be his third time earlier than the SEC, having been pressured to testify twice in 2022 - over his delayed disclosure of his Twitter stake.

Musk now says a 3rd subpoena quantities to "harassment".

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Like his fellow US tech giants, Musk has had a number of run-ins with the federal government.

In November final 12 months he failed in his bid to cease the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) presiding over X's dealing with of customers' non-public information.

He described the result as a "shameful case of weaponization of a government agency for political purposes and suppression of the truth".

The billionaire bought into scorching water once more in 2018 when he tweeted: "Funding secured", as he tried to take Tesla from public to personal possession.

Regulators argued it constituted a breach of safety legal guidelines. Musk subsequently agreed that Tesla may oversee his tweets, solely to be sued once more for breaching the settlement that they had reached beforehand.

Content Source: information.sky.com