A Philadelphia court rejected a lawsuit by District Attorney Larry Krasner, in which he demanded to prohibit Elon Musk from playing millions of dollars every day among the voters of Pennsylvania.
NBC News and The Philadelphia Inquirer write about it.
Since the end of October, Musk has been raffling off one million dollars each to Pennsylvania voters who signed a petition of his organization America PAC in defense of the first and second amendments to the US Constitution.
Prosecutor Krasner insisted that it was an "illegal lottery." Speaking in court, he also stated that Musk collected votersʼ personal data in this way. The US federal law prohibits bribery of voters and even money to register to vote. Violators (both payers and receivers) face fines or imprisonment if prosecuted. In Pennsylvania, only paying for votes, but not for registration, is considered illegal.
Muskʼs lawyers argued that the drawing was not a lottery. According to them, 17 people, who have already received a million dollars each, were chosen in advance from among registered voters. That is, they were already representatives of the America PAC committee, on whose website the petition was published, and had to fulfill their obligations to it.
"There is no prize to be won," said Muskʼs attorney Chris Gober. According to him, although Musk used the word "random", it did not mean that the names of the winners would be chosen from a blind pool, as is done in the lottery.
Muskʼs lawyer Andy Taylor also accused Krasner of trying to limit the rights of Pennsylvanians by preventing them from signing the petition.
The judge denied Krasnerʼs request without giving reasons, but promised that details would be released later. The judgeʼs ruling means that Musk will be able to make the last payment on November 5, the day the US presidential election begins.
Elon Musk and the US elections
The businessman publicly denied his involvement in sponsoring any political campaigns. Musk wrote in X that he does not give money to any of the US presidential candidates. However, over time, the billionaire began to criticize Joe Biden more often, getting closer to the US presidential candidate from the Republican Party Donald Trump.
After that, the Bloomberg agency wrote that Musk is secretly giving money to Trumpʼs election campaign. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Republican may make Elon Musk his adviser if he returns to the White House.
In September 2024, Trump announced that if he wins the election, he will create a government efficiency commission headed by Musk. This idea was voiced by the billionaire himself the day before. The commission should conduct a full financial audit of American agencies and eliminate "unreasonable" spending.
At the beginning of October 2024, the American billionaire invested another $43.6 million in America PAC to promote the US presidential candidate from the Republican party, Trump.
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