Elon Musk asks court to reject SEC's bid to make him testify in Twitter probe

Tesla, X (formerly known as Twitter) and SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk attends the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in Bletchley, Britain on November 1, 2023. Leon Neal/Pool via REUTERS

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Elon Musk asked a federal judge on Thursday not to force him to testify in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's probe into his $44 billion takeover of social media site Twitter.

Musk filed the objections in San Francisco federal court, where the SEC sued him on Oct. 5 to make him testify for the probe, which it launched in April 2022. The SEC's subpoena exceeds the agency's investigative authority, is overly burdensome and seeks "irrelevant evidence", Musk's lawyers said in the filing.