Richest-man-in-the-world Elon Musk has been going around offering U.S. voters large sums of money, and now election officials in one state have ruled that it could have violated their election bribery laws.
CBS News reported Tuesday that the Wisconsin Elections Commission found Musk’s offer of $1 million checks during a Wisconsin Supreme Court election that his political action committee spent heavily in may have violated state law. Commissioners voted 5-1 last Thursday to refer two complaints filed by voters against Musk to the Brown County District Attorney’s office, said the outlet, citing commission Communications Director Emilee Miklas.
“A motion approved by the committee found ‘probable cause’ that Musk violated a state law that makes it a crime to offer a person ‘anything of value’ to induce them to vote,” CBS said. It added that it is unclear whether Brown County District Attorney David Lasee plans to pursue charges and that CBS News has reached out to Lasee and Musk for comment.
Musk started offering cash giveaways to certain voters who sign his group’s petitions when he backed President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, said CBS. In the Wisconsin Supreme Court election last year, Musk’s America PAC awarded $1 million checks to three voters who signed a petition against
activist judges,” though the GOP-endorsed candidate he backed, Brad Schimel, lost to Democratic-endorsed Judge Susan Crawford.
While then Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, sued to stop Musk from making the payments, the state’s highest court declined to take up the issue and Musk handed out giant novelty checks days before the election. Those recipients were “dubbed spokespeople for his political action committee,” CBS noted.
Then, advocacy group sued Musk and America PAC in state court, over the checks. Musk’s legal team has sought dismissal of the suit, but it is still pending.
Wisconsin isn’t the only place where Musk’s offer of cash to voters has drawn criticism. In Pennsylvania, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, sued Musk for offering daily $1 million checks to voters in his state. Musk’s attorneys claimed that his actions were “core political speech,” and a CBS said a judge allowed the payouts to continue. A federal magistrate judge in Texas last month found that a fraud claim against Musk could go forward. In Arizona, a voter is suing Musk in federal court over his 2024 $1-million-per-day giveaways, accusing him of committing fraud and breach of contract.
“Lawyers for Musk conceded that the winners were not chosen by pure chance, and were instead ‘vetted’ as though they were applying for a job, but argued the lawsuit should be dismissed because the plaintiff did not demonstrate fraud or suffer any injury,” said CBS.
Earlier this month, a judge ruled that Musk defrauded investors in Twitter. Posts he made on the social media platform are part of what convinced the judge to agree with a jury decision on the matter.
“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” said Musk in the May 13, 2022, Twitter post.
In October of that year, investors in Twitter (re-branded as “X” by Musk in 2023 after his $44 billion purchase of the company) sued the entrepreneur. Plaintiffs claimed that his comments, including tweets, “were intended to create uncertainty and drive down the stock price to gain leverage to renegotiate or exit the deal, causing sellers during the class period to suffer losses,” per the United States District Court of the Northern District of California.
This March, a San Francisco jury unanimously found that tweets Musk posted on May 13 and May 17, 2022, about the acquisition deal and spam bot accounts on the social media platform “were materially false or misleading,” Courthouse News Service said. Musk then contested the verdict and U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer dismissed the motion this week, except a “motion for judgment as a matter of law as to statements he made on May 17, 2022,” the outlet explained.
Musk, a native of South Africa, became the world’s first trillionaire last month when his company SpaceX went public, according to Forbes. He’s also known as the CEO of Tesla.
