April 18 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has told French law enforcement it will not help with efforts to investigate tech billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing a letter from the DOJ's Office of International Affairs, dated Friday.
Paris prosecutors in February raided X’s French offices and ordered Musk to face questions in a widening investigation as part of a year-long investigation into suspected abuse of algorithms and fraudulent
data extraction by X or its executives.
"This investigation seeks to use the criminal legal system in France to regulate a public square for the free expression of ideas and opinions in a manner contrary to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution," the letter reviewed by the Journal said.
The letter added that France's requests for U.S. assistance “constitute an effort to entangle the United States in a politically charged criminal proceeding aimed at wrongfully regulating through prosecution the business activities of a social media platform.”
X and Musk have come under scrutiny from regulators and governments in several countries since his takeover of the platform, with authorities examining issues including content moderation, data practices and compliance with local laws.
Prosecutors have said the investigation centres on whether X’s algorithms distorted the treatment of content on the platform and whether the company improperly extracted user data, after complaints from French lawmakers and advocacy groups.
“We are grateful to the Justice Department for rejecting this effort by a prosecutor in Paris to compel our CEO and several employees to sit for interviews,” an xAI official told the WSJ, adding that xAI hopes the prosecutors "recognize that there is no wrongdoing here, and terminate their baseless investigation.”
The U.S. Department of Justice, French authorities and xAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
(Reporting by Abu Sultan in Bengaluru, Editing by Louise Heavens)
