DOJ declined France's judicial-assistance request in the criminal probe of Musk's X, citing the First Amendment

On Friday, April 17, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of International Affairs sent French authorities a two-page letter formally declining their request for legal assistance in France's criminal investigation of Elon Musk's social media platform X. The letter, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, accused French prosecutors of misusing their legal system to interfere with an American business and described France's requests as "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." It stated that the French probe "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."

France's investigation opened in 2025 after complaints from a lawmaker and another official alleging that X's content-selection algorithm amounted to foreign interference; it later widened to include suspected data offenses and content-moderation failures, and in February 2026 Paris prosecutors raided X's French office and summoned Musk for questioning. The Office of International Affairs is the DOJ component that processes mutual-legal- assistance requests between the United States and foreign governments, a function ordinarily handled as neutral law-enforcement cooperation. An xAI official thanked the Department for "rejecting this effort by a prosecutor in Paris to compel our CEO and several employees to sit for interviews." After The Wall Street Journal reported the letter on April 18, Musk — the owner of X and a prominent administration ally — shared the article on X and commented, "Indeed, this needs to stop."

Updates

2026-04-18 — Paris prosecutors said they had no knowledge of the DOJ letter [1]

The Paris prosecutor's office told Reuters it had no knowledge of the DOJ letter cited by the Journal and stressed that "the French constitution guarantees the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary," adding that the investigation would continue regardless of whether X executives cooperated.

2026-05-07 — France escalated to a formal criminal investigation of Musk and Yaccarino [5, 6]

Paris prosecutors escalated the matter to a formal criminal investigation, placing Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino under investigation in their capacities as platform managers over alleged complicity in distributing child sexual abuse imagery and sexual deepfakes, disinformation, and manipulation of automated data-processing systems as part of an organized group.