Tech billionaire Elon Musk is facing a fresh lawsuit this week following his recent pledge to payout $1 million daily to a randomly selected registered voter who signs his Super PAC’s petition from now until Nov. 5.
“We want to try to get over a million, maybe 2 million voters in the battleground states to sign the petition in support of the First and Second Amendment. We are going to be awarding $1 million randomly to people who have signed the petition every day from now until the election,” Musk told the audience during a campaign event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
The program is “exclusively open to registered voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina.”
On Monday (Oct.28), Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner called on a state judge to end the potentially law-breaking sweepstakes, calling it an “illegal lottery scheme.”
BREAKING: Philadelphia DA sues Elon Musk PAC over voter lottery and literally Elon has no way of saying he is not guilty since he was stupid enaugh to put his face on the enterprise. This will be epic! pic.twitter.com/oVenw0RsAL
— KamallaDreams (@KamalaDreams) October 28, 2024
“America PAC and Musk are lulling Philadelphia citizens – and others in the Commonwealth (and other swing states in the upcoming election) – to give up their personal identifying information and make a political pledge in exchange for the chance to win $1 million,” Krasner’s lawsuit reads. “That is a lottery. And it is indisputably an unlawful lottery.”
According to former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, the Department of Justice placed Musk on legal notice regarding the million-dollar daily lottery for registered swing state voters, informing the Tesla CEO that any payments issued to voters through American PAC “may violate federal law.”
Musk donated $75 million to the pro-Trump super PAC. The political committee has taken extreme action to deter voters from voting for Kamala Harris, even publishing a video to Musk-owned social media platform, X, formerly Twitter, calling the vice president the “C-word” and a “Communist.”
The video has since been deleted from America PAC’s X account.
“While some dismissed this as just ‘a sternly written letter,’ it’s more than that. The law that prohibits vote-buying ‘does so in broad terms,’ as DOJ’s election crimes manual, a Bible of sorts for federal prosecutors handling these matters, details,” said Vance.
Musk has been using his X account to disseminate misinformation about alleged “illegal voters,” whom he asserts are illegally casting their votes without the proper credentials. President Joe Biden condemned the giveaway, calling Musk a hypocrite and citing the South African-born citizen’s own pathway to citizenship.
“That wealthiest man in the world turned out to be an illegal worker here. No, I’m serious,” Biden remarked at a recent campaign stop in Pittsburgh. “He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn’t in school. He was violating the law. And he’s talking about all these illegals coming our way?”
Musk and the PAC also pledged $100 to registered voters who signed the petition.
