Oct. 23 (UPI) — Billionaire-turned-Trump campaign surrogate Elon Musk and his “America PAC” have been warned by the U.S. Justice Department in recent days that his pledge to give $1 million to registered swing-state voters may violate the law, according to reports.
On Monday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland reportedly was the recipient of a letter by a number of GOP officials requesting DOJ investigate Musk’s sweepstake. His plan, critics say, to give $1M to registered voters in either Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin may very well be in violation of federal law, according to CNN sources familiar with the issue.
A letter from DOJ’s public integrity section reportedly went to Musk’s PAC, officials familiar on the matter told CNN.
It stems from Musk’s announcement on Saturday at a Trump campaign rally in Harrisburg, Pa., that he was kicking off a sweepstakes in a push to drive voters out in swing states such as Pennsylvania, where both former President Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris and their running mates have been visiting frequently in recent days and weeks.
“We want to try to get over a million, maybe 2 million voters in the battleground states to sign” an online petition he was urging others to sign supposedly in support of the First and Second Amendment, he explained on Saturday.
The Republican letter to DOJ was lead by former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, an EPA administrator under ex-President George W. Bush. The letter, sent also to a number of Pennsylvania district attorneys, was signed as well by ex-Vice President Mike Pence‘s special adviser Olivia Troye and, among other names, former Federal Election Commission Chair Trevor Potter.
Musk, now a U.S. citizen who was born in South Africa and is owner of the social media platform X, has used his digital space in recent months to advocate on the GOP nominee’s behalf to his some 200 million or so followers.
“We are going to be awarding $1 million randomly to people who have signed the petition, every day, from now until the election,” the Tesla founder told a crowd in Pennsylvania’s state capital city.
In recent days, DOJ acknowledged the U.S. government had received complaints about Musk’s scheme. On Sunday, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro suggested Musk’s giveaway deserved legal scrutiny and called it “deeply concerning,” the Democrat and the state’s ex-attorney general said over the weekend.
It arrived the same day Musk’s political action committee altered wording on its website to reframe its message that suggest the $1M incentive was instead a job to be “a spokesperson for America PAC.”
Musk later posted on X in response to Shapiro the same day saying it was “concerning” the state’s popular governor “would say such a thing” about his attempt to sway voters through a cash payment contest.
“We are aware of nothing like this in modern political history,” Monday’s complaint reads to the Justice Department which “urged” Garland to investigate whether America PAC’s payments are in fact “prohibited payments for voter registration.”
Recently, even Musk’s own mother Maye Musk has been in hot water over accusations she seemingly was urging voters to commit voter fraud.
“We recognize that they are framed as payments for signing a petition, or for referring voters who sign,” the complaint to DOJ says. “But many of the payments are restricted to registered voters, so anyone who wishes to get paid must first register.”