Tuesday, April 21, 2026 - Tech Billionaire, Elon Musk failed to appear for a voluntary interview in Paris on Monday as part of a French probe into his social media platform X.
Prosecutors told AFP they had "taken note of the
absence of the first people summoned," without mentioning Musk's name.
The billionaire had dubbed the French authorities
"retards" weeks earlier in a French-language X post
"The presence or absence (of the people summoned) is
not an obstacle to continuing the investigation," prosecutors added.
French authorities issued a summons for Musk in February as
part of an investigation, launched in January 2025, into allegations that X's
algorithm was used to interfere in French politics.
The probe was later expanded to include an investigation
into X's AI chatbot Grok's dissemination of Holocaust denials and
s£xual deepfakes.
In early February, French prosecutors searched the Paris
offices of X, in what the social media giant – which has denied any wrongdoing
– slammed as "politicised" raids and an "abusive judicial
act".
At the time, Paris prosecutors also summoned Musk and
then-CEO Linda Yaccarino for voluntary interviews as the "de facto and de
jure managers of the X platform at the time of the events", a move Musk
called a "political attack".
Yaccarino resigned as CEO of X in July last year after two
years at the helm of the company.
In February, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said X employees
had also been summoned to appear between April 20 and 24 "to be heard as
witnesses".
But whether or not those invited for voluntary questioning
appear would not be "an obstacle to the continuation of the
investigation", the Paris prosecutor's office said on Saturday.
Officials have not offered any details on the location or
time of Musk's scheduled interview.
The French investigation focuses on several suspected
criminal offences, including complicity in possessing child s£xual abuse
material and denial of crimes against humanity.
The social media company in July called the probe
"politically motivated".

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