French authorities have summoned billionaire Elon Musk for a “voluntary interview” as cybercrime investigators raided the Paris offices of his social media platform X, the Paris public prosecutor’s office announced on Tuesday.
The operation, conducted with support from EU police agency Europol, is part of an ongoing investigation opened in January 2025 into whether X’s algorithms were used to interfere in French political processes.
“Summons for voluntary interviews on April 20, 2026, in Paris have been sent to Mr. Elon Musk and Ms. Linda Yaccarino, in their capacity as de facto and de jure managers of the X platform at the time of the events,” the prosecutors said in a statement. Yaccarino resigned as X’s CEO in July 2025 after two years leading the company.
The investigation was initiated in July 2025 following two complaints received earlier that year. Among the complaints was one filed by Eric Bothorel, a member of parliament from President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, who alleged that Musk’s “personal interventions” since acquiring X in 2022 had resulted in a “reduced diversity of voices and options” on the platform.
The probe has since expanded to examine X’s AI chatbot, Grok, for its role in circulating Holocaust denial content and sexualized deepfake material, according to the prosecutor’s office.
Authorities are now scrutinizing allegations of algorithmic manipulation and unauthorized data extraction, potentially carried out “as part of a criminal gang,” as part of the broader investigation into the platform’s practices under Musk’s leadership.
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