This week, French prosecutors announced they had summoned Elon Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino to appear for voluntary questioning in April.
The request followed a raid on X’s Paris offices carried out by authorities in coordination with Europol and French cybercrime police.
As news of the raid circulated, the U.S. Embassy of France jumped into the conversation online.
After Catturd, a popular American far-right influencer, claimed, “France can’t allow that free speech thingy,” the embassy replied directly:
“France allows that free speech thingy, but our justice system ensures that actions that are illegal offline in France are also illegal online in France. Let the courts do their job. #NoOneAboveTheLaw.”
The response caught a lot of people off guard, with many surprised to see an official embassy replying to a fringe internet personality while a serious criminal investigation was unfolding.
Cybercrime Allegations and a Paris Raid
According to the Paris prosecutor’s office, the investigation centers on a range of suspected criminal offenses involving the platform, including the distribution of child sexual abuse material, the generation of sexual deepfakes, Holocaust denial, and what prosecutors described as organized data theft.
The office noted the summons is meant to clarify whether X’s leadership is complicit and what compliance steps they plan to take.
“The voluntary interviews with the managers should enable them to explain their position on the facts and, where applicable, the compliance measures envisaged,” the prosecutor’s office said.
The search was part of a broader European crackdown on illegal online content.
Europol confirmed the investigation involves “a range of suspected criminal offences linked to the functioning and use of the platform, including the dissemination of illegal content and other forms of online criminal activity.”
In a strongly worded post from its Global Government Affairs account, X denounced the raid as political theater.
“We are disappointed by this development, but we are not surprised,” the post said.
“The Paris Public Prosecutor’s office widely publicized the raid—making clear that today’s action was an abusive act of law enforcement theater designed to achieve illegitimate political objectives.”
Musk echoed the sentiment in a post on his personal X account: “This is a political attack.”
Mounting Pressure on X in Europe
The raid in Paris isn’t an isolated incident. X has faced intensifying scrutiny across Europe.
Last year, the European Union fined the company approximately $140 million for failing to address hate speech and misinformation.
More recently, the E.U. launched a formal probe into Grok, the AI chatbot created by Musk’s xAI startup, over its involvement in generating sexual deepfakes.
Musk had just announced that SpaceX acquired xAI in a deal he said would merge rocket technology with AI to “make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!”
But not everyone is buying the optimism. In the U.K., the Information Commissioner’s Office announced its own investigation into how Grok may have processed people’s personal data to generate intimate or sexualized deepfake images.
William Malcolm, an executive director at the office, said, “The reports about Grok raise deeply troubling questions about how people’s personal data has been used to generate intimate or sexualized images without their knowledge or consent, and whether the necessary safeguards were put in place to prevent this.”
X Versus Europe: The Bigger Picture
The French prosecutor’s office also announced it was closing its own official X account, shifting to LinkedIn and Instagram for public communication.
As Musk positions X as a platform for free speech, European authorities continue to argue that the same laws that govern crimes offline must also apply online.
The dramatic collision of legal action, AI concerns, and social media politics, all amplified by unusual online exchanges, has turned what could have been a dry procedural matter into a global headline.
It’s not every day you see a country’s embassy mixing it up with a meme account while that same country is raiding the meme account’s favorite app.
You couldn’t make this up. What a time to be alive.
IMAGE CREDIT: “Elon Musk” by Gage Skidmore, via Flickr. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Image adjusted for layout.