A judge decided not to impose sanctions on Elon Musk for missing a meeting with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to witness the launch of one of his rockets.
US District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley stated on Friday that Musk would not be sanctioned because he had already agreed to pay the SEC $2,923 to cover the airfare of the three agency lawyers he missed meeting with in Los Angeles in September. Musk eventually met with the SEC lawyers for testimony on October 3rd, according to Corley.
The SEC has been investigating Musk’s purchases of Twitter Inc. stock and his statements about investments preceding the $44 billion he spent in 2022 to acquire the social media platform, which he later rebranded as X.
Musk and the SEC have had a rocky relationship for several years, dating back to when the SEC sued him for securities fraud in 2018 after he tweeted about taking Tesla Inc. private. In the Twitter investigation, Corley repeatedly instructed Musk to cooperate with the agency after he initially participated in two interviews but refused a third round of questioning.
Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, argued that Musk’s absence at the September deposition was justified because he had a pressing obligation as the head of SpaceX to travel to Florida for the Cape Canaveral launch of a rocket on a commercial spacewalk mission.
The SEC requested that Corley penalize Musk to remind him that disregarding her order was not a minor issue, but Spiro maintained that Musk’s voluntary reimbursement of $2,923 to the agency was adequate.
The case is Securities and Exchange Commission v. Musk, 23-mc-80253, US District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
