COLUMN: Musk Defies the French Courts. Here’s What His Absence Really Reveals

“They’re mentally retarded.” Read that sentence again. It was posted in mid-March by Elon Musk on X, in response to the raid on his company’s Paris offices. It was directed at French magistrates performing their official duties. These are men and women who have completed seven years of study, who have taken an oath, and who earn 4,500 euros a month to uphold the law against the powerful.

Imagine the opposite. Imagine a French magistrate calling Musk a “mentally retarded person” in a courtroom. Disciplinary action would follow within 48 hours. But Musk, for his part, faces no consequences. Because he’s above it all. Because he thinks he’s above it all. Because we’ve let him believe he’s above it all for far too long.

Insult as a Political Tactic

This isn’t a slip-up. It’s a strategy. Musk has realized that going over the top pays off more than it costs him. Every insult is a viral engagement, every provocation a trophy paraded in front of his radicalized fans. X’s algorithms—his algorithms—amplify his own insults, creating an echo chamber where he sees himself adored with every new low.

It’s no longer about running a company. It’s about cultivating a cult. And within that cult, insulting a French judge means glorifying the leader. It means proving his power. It means demonstrating that no law, no border, no institution has any hold over him.

Contempt as a Signature

Let’s remember. Musk has already called a heroic diver a “pedo guy” during the rescue of the Thai children in 2018. He has insulted U.S. securities regulators. He has publicly humiliated employees on Twitter. He called Anthony Fauci a con artist during the pandemic. Contempt is no accident with this man. It’s his operating system.

On Monday, a familiar face came to his aid: Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, who has himself been facing legal action from French authorities since his high-profile arrest at Le Bourget Airport in August 2024. “Macron’s France is losing legitimacy by exploiting criminal investigations to suppress freedom of expression,” he wrote on X, in support of his billionaire friend.

The solidarity shown by the powerful is touching. Above all, it is revealing. Durov, who spent several months under judicial supervision in France before returning to Dubai, knows exactly what awaits Musk if he sets foot on French soil. So he speaks from Dubai, from the safety of his private jets and multiple passports.

The Narrative of Victimization

Take a close look at the rhetoric. As soon as a democracy attempts to enforce its laws on these platforms, the banner of “free speech” is immediately raised. As if protecting children from child pornography were a form of censorship. As if preventing non-consensual sexual deepfakes were a crime against the First Amendment.

It’s an Orwellian reversal. The perpetrators proclaim themselves victims. The accused accuse their judges. Billionaires claim they’re being persecuted by magistrates paid 4,500 euros a month. And too many media outlets, too many commentators, swallow this inversion without batting an eye.

The Brotherhood of the Powerful Against Institutions

Durov defends Musk. Musk defends Trump. Trump defends Putin. Putin defends Lukashenko. A chain of complicity is being forged, where each link protects the other from the ordinary justice of democracies. And at the end of this chain, it’s always the same losers: citizens, women, children, workers, and documented truths.

Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal revealed an explosive letter. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs wrote to the Paris prosecutor’s office to express support for X. According to Washington, the Paris investigation violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Read that sentence twice. The U.S. government is attempting to impose its Constitution on France—on French soil—to protect a billionaire accused of hosting child pornography and producing non-consensual sexual deepfakes.

Extraterritoriality Turned on Its Head

For years, Washington has imposed its laws on the entire world—economic sanctions, the FCPA, the Patriot Act applied to European servers, exported anti-BDS laws, and the CLOUD Act, which compels U.S. companies to hand over the data of foreign citizens. Today, that same Washington refuses to allow France to apply its own laws on its own territory to a company that operates in the French market and generates revenue there.

Double standards elevated to the status of state doctrine. When extraterritoriality serves U.S. interests, it is legitimate. When a European democracy simply wants to enforce its laws at home, it becomes an “infringement on freedom of expression.”

The “Trump Effect” on Global Regulation

This forceful intervention by Washington is no trivial matter. It is part of a major geopolitical shift. Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025—and his overt alliance with tech billionaires, led by Musk, who funded his campaign to the tune of $290 million—the United States is no longer the guarantor of a balanced international legal order.

Under the Trump II administration, the U.S. has become the enforcer of a tech oligarchy that rejects any form of democratic regulation.

Faced with this steamroller, the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office responded with admirable restraint. “The French Constitution guarantees the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary. Criminal investigations are conducted under the sole authority of judges.”

Translation: We do not negotiate. We do not back down. We investigate. We enforce the law. Neither Washington nor Mar-a-Lago nor a South African-Canadian-American billionaire will dictate how the French justice system conducts itself.

A Lesson in Sovereignty

And yet, in a world where so many governments bow to the pressure of tech platforms, this French resolve has an almost revolutionary quality. Paris is reminding us of a self-evident truth that everyone had forgotten: a territory is defined by its laws. Laws must be enforced. Period.

One might have imagined Emmanuel Macron yielding to American pressure, negotiating a discreet settlement, and sacrificing the investigation on the altar of transatlantic relations. He did not. The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office, independent by nature and protected by the Constitution, stood its ground.

The Republic Against the Oligarchy

There is something in this resolve that comes from a very distant past. Something that dates back to 1789, to the idea—crazy at the time—that no man is above the law. Not a king. Not a cardinal. Not a banker. Not a tech billionaire. France invented that idea through blood and sweat. It won’t sell it short just to please Elon Musk.

Amid all the uproar caused by this scandal, who is speaking up for the victims? Who is naming the exploited children? Who is speaking out for the women whose faces were stolen to create pornographic deepfakes?

Almost no one. Because the victims don’t draw a crowd. Because they don’t have an X account with 200 million followers. Because they weep in silence while billionaires bellow on social media platforms.

Humanity Erased from the Debate

A young woman, a teacher at a French high school, discovers one morning that her face has been superimposed onto a naked body, shared with millions of people. Created by AI. Impossible to completely erase. This is the reality behind the grand rhetoric about “freedom of expression.”

A 15-year-old girl, bullied at her middle school, sees a nude image of herself circulating on her classmates’ phones—fabricated, fake, yet indistinguishable from the real thing. She attempts suicide that very evening. This is what we’re talking about. This is what the French justice system is patiently trying to prevent.

The Numbers We Don’t Want to See

According to a report by the French organization e-Enfance published in January 2026, reports of sexual deepfakes targeting minors have increased by 340% over the past eighteen months. Reports of child pornography on X increased by 195% over the same period. These figures didn’t come out of nowhere. They correspond to the precise timeline of the collapse of moderation on the platform following its acquisition by Musk in late 2022.

People continue to refer to X as a “social network.” That’s a relic of the past. Since Musk’s acquisition in 2022, the platform has undergone a transformation. Content moderation has collapsed, extremist accounts have been reinstated, algorithms prioritize hate speech, AI has been integrated without serious safeguards, and the pricing policy rewards virality regardless of content.

X is no longer a social network. It is a weapon. A political and ideological weapon—and now, according to French allegations, a sexual weapon—used against children and women.

The mask has come off

As long as Musk embodied the “visionary genius” of Tesla and SpaceX, the world tolerated his eccentricities. But the Paris affair reveals a different character: a man willing to insult democratically elected magistrates, to refuse to appear in court, and to mobilize his government to stifle an investigation into child pornography.

He is no longer an entrepreneur. He is a feudal lord who refuses to recognize the king’s justice. Except that we are no longer in 1180. We are in 2026. And modern democracies do not have to put up with digital barons who think they are sovereigns.

The Platform That Has Become a Public Menace

Let’s be clear: X, in its current form, poses a public safety problem. Not just in France. Everywhere. Studies by the Observatory of Journalism, the Reuters Institute, and the University of Oxford all point to the same conclusion: disinformation proliferates there, hate is algorithmically amplified, and criminal content persists there far longer than on competing platforms.

This case extends beyond France. The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office has stated that it has forwarded case files to several European public prosecutor’s offices, as well as to prosecutors in California and New York. Similar investigations targeting X are underway in several countries: Germany, Ireland, Spain, and Italy.

Europe now has the Digital Services Act, laws against deepfakes adopted in 2024, and an unprecedented legal arsenal. The question is no longer: Can we regulate the tech giants? It is: Do we have the political courage to see it through to the end?

The test for an entire generation of institutions

If Paris gives in, all of Europe will give in. If Paris stands firm, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, and Warsaw will know that it is possible to stand firm. That empty chair on Monday morning was not just an absence. It was a test. A test for European democracies. A test for the credibility of the DSA. A test for the very idea that a state can still say no to a billionaire.

Brussels Must Follow Paris’s Lead

The European Commission, which has been conducting formal proceedings against an unidentified party since December 2023 for violations of the DSA, must now step up its efforts. Administrative fines are not enough. More radical measures must be considered: temporary suspension of certain features, mandatory independent audits of algorithms, or even withdrawal of access to the European market in the event of persistent refusal to cooperate.

There is something profoundly beautiful about the French response to this case. No media hype. No theatrical threats. No fiery speeches in the National Assembly. Just one sentence: “Absence is no obstacle to continuing the investigation.”

This is democracy speaking. Calm, patient, unyielding. It will not shout. It will not take offense. It will investigate. It will document. It will judge. And one day—perhaps in six months, perhaps in three years—the verdict will be handed down.

Justice is slow, but it will come

Musk thinks he’s won by not showing up. He’s lost. Because he’s revealed, before the whole world, that he believes himself to be above the law. No communications team will ever be able to erase that revelation. Every journalist, every judge, every regulator, every member of parliament in Europe will remember it.

And when the next scandal breaks—because there will be others—the argument of good faith will no longer hold water. Musk will have already shown that he prefers insults to appearing in court, excess to cooperation, and arrogance to transparency.

An Arrest Warrant on the Horizon

If Musk continues to refuse any summons, the Paris prosecutor’s office may, eventually, request the issuance of a European arrest warrant—and why not an international one? Pavel Durov, too, thought he was untouchable. He found himself in handcuffs at Le Bourget Airport. History, at times, has a way of exacting revenge.

Ultimately, this isn’t Elon Musk’s problem. It’s ours. It raises a simple yet terrifying question: To what extent are we willing to be disrespected by those in power?

Do we accept that a foreign billionaire insults our judges? Do we accept that his platform hosts images of abused children and sexual deepfakes created without consent? Do we accept that Washington dictates our criminal law? Do we accept that wealth has become a de facto immunity from prosecution?

The Necessary Wake-Up Call

Every generation must, at some point, draw a line. To say: this far, but no further. Paris just drew its line on Monday morning. It remains to be seen whether the rest of the continent will have the courage to follow suit.

And we—citizens, readers, and users of these platforms—also have a line to draw. Not necessarily by leaving X—though that is a legitimate choice. But by rejecting the narrative that regulating these platforms is an infringement on freedom. By rejecting the myth of the persecution of billionaires. By publicly supporting the judges who are doing their jobs against all odds.

Freedom is not something to be bargained away with the powerful

True freedom of expression—that of the Enlightenment philosophers, that of Voltaire, that of Zola—has never been the freedom of the powerful against the weak. It has always been the opposite: the freedom of the weak against the powerful. That of the citizen against the king. That of the journalist against the minister. That of the abused woman against the violent man.

When Musk wraps himself in the banner of freedom of expression to refuse to appear before judges investigating the distribution of child pornography, he is not defending Voltaire. He is betraying him.

Monday, April 20, 2026, will go down in the history of European digital regulation. Not because anything spectacular happened that day. On the contrary: because nothing happened at all. A chair remained empty. A silence fell. And in that silence, a democracy decided that it would press on, without getting overly indignant, without giving an inch.

The story of this case has only just begun. In a few months, other witnesses will be heard. Other evidence will be added to the record. Other searches may take place. And one day, a trial date will be set. Will Musk appear? Perhaps not. But his repeated absence will eventually weigh heavily—just as, throughout history, all the guilty silences of the powerful in the face of their judges have weighed heavily.

France, the Outpost of a Global Battle

In the meantime, Paris stands tall. It does not scream. It does not threaten. It investigates. And in this sober, almost austere gesture, there is something that resembles the honor of a civilization. The honor of declaring that the laws apply to everyone. The honor of refusing to let money buy impunity. The honor of protecting the weak against the strong, even when the strong are the richest men in the world.

That empty chair on Monday morning was not a failure. It was a victory. The quiet but decisive victory of a democracy that refuses to be humiliated.

Signed, Jacques PJ Provost