Musk to be arrested if he comes to Paris, French politician warns

X owner Elon Musk will be jailed if he makes the mistake of coming to France, as he has been asked to do by the European nation’s law enforcement.

The warning has been issued by a French politician a day after the offices of the American billionaire’s social network were raided as part of a probe against it.

Musk urged to ignore French summons for his own safety

Elon Musk will be detained as soon as he sets foot on French soil, according to Florian Philippot, leader of the nationalist Les Patriotes party.

On Wednesday, he took to X to advise the entrepreneur to refrain from visiting his country, which had invited him to appear for a “voluntary interview” on April 20.

Authorities in France want to question Musk and the former CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, within an investigation over a long list of alleged offenses.

The microblogging platform and its AI-powered chatbot Grok have been accused in France of spreading extremist far-right content and generating sexual abuse material using artificial intelligence.

On Tuesday, the Paris headquarters of the social media platform were searched by prosecutors and police officers in an operation backed by Europol, as reported by Cryptopolitan.

In his tweet, Philippot advised Musk to throw the summons in the trash and strongly suggested the owner of X shouldn’t travel to the French Republic, which is “no longer a state of law,” in his view.

“He would immediately be thrown in jail and then sequestered on national territory, just as Pavel Durov was!” added the politician.

France is after both X’s Musk and Telegram’s Durov

Philippot was referring to the case of another tech entrepreneur who faced similar pressure from the French judiciary, the founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov.

The dual French-Emirati citizen was arrested in France in August 2024 amid accusations of complicity in criminal activity.

Authorities in Paris claimed that the popular messenger, of which he is also the chief executive, was spreading illegal content and facilitating illicit transactions.

Durov, who has repeatedly rejected the allegations, was eventually released but then questioned again in the summer of 2025, as part of the launched investigation.

“France is the only country in the world that is criminally persecuting all social networks that give people some degree of freedom (Telegram, X, TikTok…). Don’t be mistaken: this is not a free country,” he posted on X in reaction to the news of the raid on the X offices.

In a statement, the U.S. social media network denied any wrongdoing and accused the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office of endangering free speech. Musk himself described the action of the French law enforcement as a “political attack.”

Florian Philippot, who speaks of France as being “under euro-Macronist occupation,” is a former Vice President of the National Front. He founded The Patriots (LP) after quitting his post in 2017.

Front National changed its name to Rassemblement National (RN), or the National Rally, in 2028, as proposed by its leader, Marine Le Pen.

Unlike the RN, which abandoned its previously strong Euroscepticism, the LP remains a hardline Eurosceptic party and hasn’t seen the same electoral success.

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