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Elon Musk’s controversial $1 million giveaway to voters who signed a pledge supporting the First and Second Amendments wasn’t actually a random giveaway at all, and his team has admitted it.
During a hearing in a Philadelphia courtroom that ran for hours on Monday, Musk’s lawyer Chris Gober told a judge the $1 million is a “salary” that contestants earn to be a spokesperson for the pro-Trump America PAC. Winners were pre-selected based on their “suitability to serve” and their personal story, not totally chosen by chance, which would fall under Philadelphia gambling law. Quite a way to argue in your defense, that what you did wasn’t a crime because you were lying to your followers in the first place.
Chris Young, another Musk deputy, summed up the team’s defense: “The opportunity to earn is different from the chance to win.” When Musk initially announced the giveaway, he explicitly said “we are going to be awarding $1 million randomly.” It sounded like there were no strings attached, no allegiances or “suitability to serve” required.
After Musk announced the contest, questions many people immediately raised questions about whether the program was even legal. It is illegal to pay anyone to register to vote, but the contest rules required participants to be registered voters and sign a pledge supporting the First and Second Amendments. If nothing else, the plan gave the impression of dangling money in front of voters to get them to register. Musk has been hosting pro-Trump rallies in swing states and critics have said the giveaway is a thinly-veiled way to buy votes for Trump.
Something of a Mr. Beast-style contest, the whole charade risks further turning politics into a popularity contest to see who will go to the furthest lengths and be the most “le epic,” for attention.
The Justice Department reportedly warned the America PAC about the giveaway, and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office took Musk to court over it.
Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner said in court today that the so-called giveaway constituted an illegal lottery under its gambling laws, and that the America PAC was not sufficiently disclosing to participants what information it was collecting. “They were scammed for their information,” Krasner testified. “It has almost unlimited use.” He used other harsh words to rail at Musk, calling the charade a “grift” and “disingenuous.” Krasner’s team noted the America PAC made winners sign an NDA agreeing to not talk about them, meaning they were supposed to support the PAC but not mention they were instructed to do so.
Musk’s team effectively was saying, this is not actually a lottery at all like Krasner thinks, because a lottery would require no strings attached, and this arrangement quietly had strings attached. They were deceiving their fans, in essence. In closing arguments, Krasner’s team said exactly that. “They essentially advertised this as a lottery. It’s not a defense of ‘What we said isn’t true.'”
Krasner’s team called hiring undisclosed spokespeople “one of the great scams of the last 50 years.”
Either way, Musk’s team told the judge the “giveaway” won’t run past Tuesday.
This is a developing story and we’ll update this post as we learn more.
