deposition

“Things are very different now. Things evolved during the period of time that I was there where the police commissioners, for all intents and purposes, provided a rubber stamp,” he said in the deposition.

Mr Musk's lawyers say they too had travelled to Los Angeles to be at his deposition last month and "immediately notified the SEC of the emergency".

For the 10 September court hearing, the SEC said it spent thousands of dollars to dispatch three lawyers - two from San Francisco and another from Washington DC -so they could take a sworn deposition from the billionaire tech mogul.

But SpaceX had posted about the timing of the scheduled launch two days before Mr Musk's deposition date.

He slapped open a manila folder to reveal a civil deposition addressed to Corinne Leone, the director of Law Library Services: “Why do we have outdated typewriters when we have tablets?”