Ministry of Justice Warns Elon Musk that the $1 Million Donation he Made to Voters may be Illegal
It appears that the Department of Justice is exploring the legality of Elon Musk’s maneuver to donate one million dollars a day to registered voters who sign a petition to support the first and second amendments. CNN reports indicate that the Department of Justice “warned” Musk’s American Political Action Committee that the activity may violate federal law.
The controversial “Mr. Beast-style” gift has sparked criticism from experts who say that the gift constitutes illegal vote-buying. In the United States, it is illegal to pay someone to vote, not vote, or register to vote. Getting signatures from registered voters naturally requires them to be registered to vote, so some may argue that Musk is incentivizing citizens to register – specifically in swing states like Pennsylvania that Trump needs to win. It’s hard to believe that anyone receiving a million dollars from Musk in a swing state wouldn’t vote for Trump in return.
The monetary donation may be Musk’s best attempt to help Trump. Reports indicate that Musk’s PAC has struggled in its ground game. According to The Guardian, the vote collectors hired by Musk’s PAC to get votes for Trump use an app to track every door they knock on, so there is no overlap. However, some vote collectors have become lazy and found ways to spoof their GPS location so they can mark homes as visited when they haven’t actually visited them. Some new polls suggest that support for Musk makes young people less likely to vote for Trump.
The Department of Justice has already acknowledged receiving complaints about Musk’s efforts in recent days. On Monday, several former Republican officials sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting the Department of Justice to look into Musk’s voter gift.
The complaint stated, “We have never seen anything like this in recent political history,” in reference to Musk’s payments. “We urge you to investigate whether payments to Musk’s American Political Action Committee are prohibited payments in exchange for registering voters. We understand that they are framed as payments for signing a petition, or for referring voters who sign. But many of the payments are limited to registered voters, so anyone wanting to receive the money must register first.
Musk has proven over the years to be somewhat resilient to legal challenges, such as winning a defamation lawsuit over the “pedo guy” tweet, and another lawsuit against Tesla where shareholders accused the company of fraud in its acquisition of SolarCity. After Musk falsely tweeted that he had secured funding to take Tesla private, he faced a lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission for misleading investors, ultimately paying a small fine of $20 million and agreeing to hire a lawyer to review all his tweets before posting. But no one really believes his tweets are pre-approved. And of course, X company, formerly known as Twitter, faces a series of lawsuits for everything from unpaid office rentals to deciding not to pay severance to laid-off employees.
Technically, if it turns out Musk is illegally paying citizens to register to vote, he could face up to five years in prison. But this is Elon. Assuming CNN‘s reports are accurate, the Department of Justice’s precaution in saying that his gifts “may” be illegal could lead Musk to throw their calls into a heap of lawsuits and other legal challenges he largely ignores. Having lots of money and good lawyers still doesn’t make it worth it if it doesn’t do much good in the end.
