SAN FRANCISCO (NEWSnet/AP) — A judge has ordered Elon Musk to testify for a third time as part of Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation of  his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, now called X, in 2022.

Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler issued an order Feb. 10 giving Musk, his team and the SEC a week to agree on a date and location for Musk’s testimony.

In a court hearing in December 2023, Beeler said she would issue an order if the two sides couldn’t agree on when and where the Tesla and SpaceX CEO would testify.

“The parties, at least initially, agreed to a date but ultimately the respondent did not appear and resists the subpoena on the grounds that the SEC’s investigation is baseless and harassing and seeks irrelevant information,” Beeler wrote in the order in federal court in Northern California.

She also said Musk contends the subpoena exceeds SEC’s authority because it was not issued by an officer appointed by the President, a court or the head of a department, as required by the U.S. Constitution.

SEC has been conducting a fact-finding investigation into the period before Musk’s Twitter takeover, when the social media company was publicly traded. The agency said it has not concluded any federal securities laws were violated.

Musk has testified twice in the case twice. But since then, according to the judge’s order, SEC has received “thousands of new documents” from various parties, including hundreds of documents from Musk.

He closed his $44 billion agreement to buy Twitter and take it private in October 2022, after a legal battle with the social media company’s previous leadership.

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