French prosecutors investigating Elon Musk and his social media platform Xi have summoned the billionaire to France to face initial charges. According to French officials, the investigation is now officially a criminal case.
France opened an investigation in 2025 to investigate whether X broke French law. The investigation widened last year after Musk’s AI chatbot Grok started denying the Holocaust, glorifying Hitler and creating child sexual abuse material at the request of users.
according to Wall Street MagazineMusk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino have been asked to travel to France to face preliminary charges. As the magazine explains, in France, after the initial charges are laid, the investigating magistrate begins a process that can take months and does not necessarily mean a trial will be held. It is entirely possible that the case may ultimately be dismissed.
French authorities are investigating Musk’s “complicity” in the creation of images of sexual exploitation of minors and blatant sex fraud. Associated Press. Grock also allegedly spread disinformation in French, including that Auschwitz was not a Holocaust death camp but was used for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus.”
Musk bought Twitter in late 2022 and changed its name to X. The billionaire has made many changes to the platform, removing safeguards that let people know when an account is being verified and inviting back far-right figures who were previously banned. Musk has welcomed users such as white racist Nick Fuentes and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, among others.
Musk also worked on ways to make the site a hotbed of far-right extremism and pro-Trump propaganda ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Musk donated more than $290 million to Republicans in 2024 and even ran a program that paid some voters in swing states up to $1 million to sign a “petition,” an attempt to pay people to vote for Trump.
Musk, now worth $803 billion, was awarded the job overseeing the dismantling of agencies in the federal government under the auspices of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency. In the end, nearly 300,000 government workers lost their jobs and USAID was illegally disbanded. Global aid cuts are estimated to kill 23 million people by 2030, according to the analysis. Lancet Global Health.
Last month, the U.S. Justice Department told French authorities it would not assist in any U.S. investigation of Musk and X, which was not a surprise given the billionaire oligarch’s ties to the Trump regime.
“This investigation seeks to use the French criminal justice system to regulate the public arena for the free expression of ideas and opinions in violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution,” the April letter said. The Wall Street Journal.
X did not immediately respond to questions emailed Thursday about whether Musk planned to travel to France. Gizmodo will update this article if we hear back.
