US Moves to Back Musk's Fight Against €120M EU Fine on X

The US Department of Justice has filed an application with the EU's General Court to join Elon Musk's legal challenge against a €120m (£105m) European Commission fine imposed on X over its paid blue tick badges.

The fine, announced in December 2025, was the Commission's first official non-compliance decision under the Digital Services Act (DSA), one of two mandatory rulebooks governing online platforms in the EU. The Commission found that X "deceives users" by allowing people to pay for a blue verified check mark because the platform is not "meaningfully verifying" who is behind the account.

US Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate said on Thursday that the commission had "inappropriately attempted" to expand its reach to American companies outside its control.

Musk, who spent millions helping elect Donald Trump and other Republicans, has previously claimed EU tech regulation "inhibits progress" for companies.

The DOJ's filing rests on a section of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the EU that allows a state to intervene in disputes before the court if it "can establish an interest in the result of the case to the court." The department argued the US "has a clear interest" in ensuring any decision by the commission was applied consistently with "how territorial jurisdiction is generally understood in international law."

It also wants to ensure the ruling would not "otherwise prejudice" US-headquartered digital services that "contribute significantly" to its economy. The European Commission has been contacted for comment.

The US intervention escalates a political standoff that began well before the court filing. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Federal Communications Commission had already criticised the EU regulator, accusing it of attacking and censoring US firms.

"The European Commission's fine isn't just an attack on X, it's an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments," Rubio wrote in a post on X. "The days of censoring Americans online are over." Musk reposted the remarks and added "absolutely."

The Commission has rejected the accusation of bias. It denied targeting any specific nationality, stating it is simply protecting its digital and democratic standards to maintain its role as a global benchmark.

Beyond the blue ticks, EU regulators accused X of failing to provide transparency around its adverts and denying researchers access to public data. Henna Virkkunen, the Commission's executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, said at the time of the fine's issue that the regulator was "holding X responsible for undermining users' rights and evading accountability."

"Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU," Virkkunen said.

The DSA case is not the only regulatory exposure X faces in Brussels. The EU is conducting several other investigations into the platform, including one into its integrated AI assistant Grok over concerns it was used to create sexualised images of real people.

The General Court's decision on whether to admit the US as an intervener will signal how far third-country governments can formally weigh in on DSA enforcement — a question that grows more pressing as Washington and Brussels continue to collide over the regulation of American technology firms.