Paris Summoned Musk on Seven Criminal Counts. He Didn't Appear.
Procureure de la République Laure Beccuau convened Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino for an audition libre on April 20 as subjects of a seven-count cybercrime investigation into X. Neither showed. The U.S. DOJ declined mutual legal assistance three days before the hearing.
Elon Musk did not appear at the Paris prosecutor's office on Monday.
He had been summoned — along with former X CEO Linda Yaccarino — to an audition libre on April 20, 2026, as subjects of a seven-count criminal investigation run by the Parquet de Paris cybercrime section. The summons, issued February 3 in a public communiqué de presse from Procureure de la République Laure Beccuau, named Musk and Yaccarino "en leur qualité de gérant de fait et de droit de la plateforme X au moment des faits" — as the platform's de facto and de jure managers at the time of the alleged offenses.
On Saturday, two days before the hearing, the prosecutor's office told reporters that attendance was not required: "l'absence des personnes convoquées ne fait pas obstacle à la poursuite des investigations." Musk took the out.
The charges
Beccuau's February 3 communiqué lists seven qualifications pénales under French law:
- Complicité de détention d'images de mineurs présentant un caractère pédopornographique
- Complicité de diffusion, offre ou mise à disposition en bande organisée d'image de mineurs présentant un caractère pédopornographique
- Atteinte à la représentation de la personne (deepfake à caractère sexuel)
- Contestation de crime contre l'humanité (négationnisme)
- Extraction frauduleuse de données d'un système de traitement automatisé de données en bande organisée
- Falsification du fonctionnement d'un système de traitement automatisé de données en bande organisée
- Administration d'une plateforme en ligne illicite en bande organisée
The first two are complicity counts concerning child sexual abuse material. The third — atteinte à la représentation de la personne — is France's criminal offense for sexualized deepfakes. The fourth, contestation de crime contre l'humanité, is the French Holocaust-denial statute. The recurring "en bande organisée" — "in an organized group" — is an aggravating modifier that raises both the ceiling on sentencing and the available investigative powers (wiretaps, custody extensions, special jurisdiction).
How the case got here
The communiqué traces the investigation to two signalements — formal reports — received January 12, 2025. On July 9, 2025, the parquet delegated the probe to the Direction Générale de la Gendarmerie Nationale. It was then broadened, Beccuau writes, "à la suite d'autres signalements dénonçant le fonctionnement de Grok sur la plateforme X, ayant conduit à la diffusion de contenus négationnistes et de deepfakes à caractère sexuel" — after new reports about Grok, xAI's chatbot integrated into X, generating Holocaust-denying content and non-consensual sexual deepfakes.
The investigation is run by the Parquet's Section J3 cybercrime unit with the gendarmerie's UNCyber division, "en présence d'Europol." A perquisition — a judicial search — of X's Paris offices was conducted the day the communiqué issued.
What Paris cannot reach
On April 17, three days before Musk's hearing, the U.S. Department of Justice declined a French request for mutual legal assistance, citing First Amendment concerns. The refusal removes the primary channel France would normally use to compel testimony or preserve evidence from X or xAI's U.S.-based servers and personnel. It leaves Paris prosecuting a platform whose core systems sit outside its physical jurisdiction.
Musk has personally attacked the investigation on X, calling French authorities "retards" in a French-language post weeks before Monday's hearing. X has called the perquisition an "abusive judicial act" with "political motivations." Yaccarino, who resigned from X in July 2025, also did not appear. Employees of X France were summoned to testify as witnesses the week of April 20-24.
Beccuau had framed the enquête in February as "une démarche constructive, dans l'objectif de garantir in fine la conformité de la plateforme X aux lois françaises." That framing — compliance first, prosecution as leverage — is standard for Paris cybercrime operations against U.S. tech platforms. The communiqué itself specifies the audition libre was designed "pour leur permettre d'exposer leur position sur les faits et le cas échéant les mesures de mise en conformité envisagées" — to let the executives present their position and propose compliance measures.
That option closed Monday at 10 a.m. Paris time. Beccuau's office responded, per multiple French outlets quoting the parquet directly, that it had "pris acte" of the absence. The investigation continues.