Justice Department Warns Elon Musk That His $1 million Voter Giveaway Might Be Illegal

It seems that the Justice Department is exploring the legality of Elon Musk’s gambit to springiness distant a cardinal dollars each time to registered voters who motion a petition successful supporting of the First and Second Amendments. CNN reports that the DOJ has “warned” Elon Musk’s America PAC that the enactment whitethorn interruption national law.

The arguable Mr. Beast-style giveaway has drawn disapproval from experts who accidental that the giveaway constitutes amerciable vote-buying. In the U.S., it is amerciable to wage idiosyncratic to vote, not vote, oregon registry to vote. Getting signatures from registered voters requires them to, of course, beryllium registered to vote, and truthful immoderate mightiness reason that Musk is incentivizing citizens to register—and specifically successful plaything states similar Pennsylvania that Trump needs to win. And it’s hard to judge anyone who receives a cardinal dollars from Musk successful 1 of the plaything states is not successful crook going to ballot for Trump.

Giving distant wealth mightiness beryllium his champion effort astatine helping Trump. Reporting has suggested that Musk’s PAC has struggled with its crushed game. According to the Guardian, canvassers hired by the PAC usage an app to log each doorway they knock, truthful there’s nary overlap. But seemingly immoderate canvassers person gotten lazy and recovered ways to spoof their GPS location truthful they tin people homes arsenic visited that they didn’t really visit. And immoderate polling of young men suggests that Musk’s endorsement makes them little likely to ballot for Trump.

The Justice Department already acknowledged successful caller days that it’s received complaints astir Musk’s effort. On Monday, a fig of erstwhile Republican officials sent a missive to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting that the DOJ look into Musk’s giveaway to voters.

“We are alert of thing similar this successful modern governmental history,” the ailment reads, successful notation to Musk’s payments. “We impulse you to analyse whether America PAC’s payments are prohibited payments for elector registration. We admit that they are framed arsenic payments for signing a petition, oregon for referring voters who sign. But galore of the payments are restricted to registered voters, truthful anyone who wishes to get paid indispensable archetypal register.”

Musk implicit the years has proven himself somewhat impervious to ineligible challenges, for lawsuit winning the infamous “pedo guy” defamation lawsuit, and different suit against Tesla successful which abbreviated sellers accused the institution of fraud successful its acquisition of SolarCity. After Musk falsely tweeted that helium had secured backing to instrumentality Tesla private, helium faced a suit from the SEC for misleading investors, yet paying a tiny good of $20 cardinal and agreeing to person a lawyer reappraisal each of his tweets earlier they’re published—but cipher truly believes his tweets are being approved. And of course, X, formerly Twitter, continues to look a bid of lawsuits for everything from unpaid bureau rent and simply deciding not to wage severance to laid disconnected employees.

Technically speaking, if Musk were recovered to beryllium illegally paying citizens to registry to vote, helium could look up to 5 years successful prison. But this is Elon. Assuming CNN’s reporting is correct, the information that the Justice Department is hedging by saying his giveaways “might” beryllium amerciable apt volition effect successful Musk conscionable throwing their communications into a stack with each the different lawsuits and ineligible challenges helium mostly disregards. Having a batch of wealth and bully lawyers is inactive worthy thing adjacent if it hasn’t helped Diddy excessively much.