* SEC and Musk discuss 'potential resolution' to lawsuit

* Musk accused SEC of targeting him over Twitter

disclosure delay

* SEC declines to comment, Musk's lawyers not available

By Jonathan Stempel and Chris Prentice

March 17 (Reuters) - Elon Musk and the U.S. Securities

and Exchange Commission are in talks to settle the regulator's

lawsuit accusing the world's richest person of waiting too long

in 2022 to disclose his initial purchases of Twitter, which he

eventually bought for $44 billion and renamed X.

In a court filing on Tuesday, the SEC and Musk said they are

"engaged in discussions of a potential resolution that would

mean further proceedings might not be necessary."

Both sides asked U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan in

Washington, D.C., who oversees the case, to extend a deadline

for scheduling further proceedings to April 1 from March 18.

The SEC declined to comment. Musk's lawyers did not

immediately respond to requests for comment.

News of a possible settlement surfaced six weeks after

Sooknanan rejected Musk's bid to dismiss the case, and comes as

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins refocuses some of the regulator's

enforcement priorities.

A settlement would end often-fraught litigation between the

SEC and Musk that began in September 2018 when the regulator

charged Musk with securities fraud for saying on Twitter he had

"secured" funding to potentially take his electric car company

Tesla private.

Musk, the world's richest man, settled that case by paying a

$20 million civil fine, agreeing to let Tesla lawyers review

some Twitter posts in advance, and giving up his role as Tesla's

chairman.

MUSK ACCUSED SEC OF TARGETING HIM

In its January 2025 lawsuit, the SEC said Musk's 11-day

delay in revealing his initial 5% Twitter stake in late March

and early April 2022 let him buy more than $500 million of

shares at artificially low prices.

The SEC has argued that Musk should pay a civil fine and repay

the $150 million he allegedly saved at the expense of

unsuspecting investors.

Musk called the delay inadvertent, and accused the SEC of

violating his free speech rights by targeting him.

In a separate case on Tuesday, a San Francisco federal jury

heard closing arguments in a trial by former Twitter

shareholders who said Musk misled them as he tried to back out

of the takeover.

Musk has argued that Twitter had more fake accounts than it

had disclosed, giving him a reason to abandon the purchase.

X is now part of Musk's rocket and satellite company SpaceX,

following its purchase last month of his artificial intelligence

company xAI.

That acquisition created the world's most valuable private

company, worth about $1.25 trillion at the time. SpaceX could

sell shares in an initial public offering as early as June.

Musk was worth about $834 billion on Monday, according to

Forbes magazine, more than triple the fortune of second-ranked

Google co-founder Larry Page.