Elon Musk ignored a summons to meet on Monday morning with Paris prosecutors investigating him and his social media company, X, deepening the standoff between the French judicial system and the American tech giant.
Mr. Musk’s no-show came more than two months after the French police had raided X’s Paris premises as part of a long-running investigation by the cybercrime division of the Paris prosecutor’s office.
The prosecutors have been investigating X since January 2025 and they have spoken of looking into seven potential counts under French law, including accusations of complicity in distributing child sexual abuse imagery, producing content that denies crimes against humanity and fraudulent extraction of data.
On the day of the raid in February, Mr. Musk was summoned to meet in April with the investigating judge and discuss the potential charges. Such an invitation is a regular part of a criminal investigation 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, calling it a “political attack.” The prosecutor’s office did not announce any immediate legal consequence for his failure to attend. Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
The investigation started amid French concerns with X’s algorithm, the digital process that organizes data on the platform, and then expanded after further accusations that Grok, X’s A.I. chatbot, was spreading Holocaust denial claims and sexual deepfakes.
After the raid in February, the company’s global government affairs office said in a public statement that it “categorically denies any wrongdoing” and said that the investigation “distorts French law, circumvents due process, and endangers free speech.”
Separately, the company said in January that it had restricted Grok’s image creation to avoid the spread of sexualized images.
In a statement released on Monday, the Paris prosecutor’s office said that Mr. Musk’s absence “will not hinder the continuation of the investigation.” It also said that the judiciary is independent as the “French Constitution guarantees the separation of powers.”
The case is at the heart of a broader dispute between American tech companies and European governments over the extent to which those companies should be held responsible for content on their platforms.
The European Union has enacted sweeping digital regulations, threatening technology firms with fines unless they police their platforms for illicit content, misinformation and hate speech.
In December, the European Union issued the first fine under its new Digital Services Act, fining X $140 million for violations. The following month, E.U. regulators announced an investigation into X over the spread of sexualized images generated by Grok.
French authorities have shown a rare willingness to go after top tech executives, holding them personally liable for the behavior of platform users.
The issue has become particularly tense under the Trump administration, which has spoken and acted increasingly aggressively against Europeans it associates with the push to regulate American tech firms.
The dispute reflects a trans-Atlantic disagreement over how and whether to regulate social media.
Europeans say their moves are an attempt to protect users from abusive content. The Trump administration calls the fines an unfair money grab from 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.
Catherine Porter is an international reporter for The Times, covering France. She is based in Paris.
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