Elon Musk is in a big trouble.
Amplified by his own lawyers.
Long story short:
- Elon was running a USD $1 million daily giveaway, with the goal of collecting contact details of Pennsylvania voters and getting them to vote for Trump. The pretext was to sign a petition in support of 1st and 2nd Amendment.
- Elon publicly stated that the prize of $1 million would be assigned “randomly” daily.
- This was likely a violation of the federal election law — but besides that, it‘s also “an illegal lottery” under the PA law. So, Philadelphia DA brought him to court for that.
- What happened next is nothing short of a legal atrocity: Musk’s lawyers declared it wasn’t a lottery — that it was a payment for a job! “There is no prize to be won” and winners “are not chosen at random,” Musk’s lawyer Chris Gober asserted: $1m is a salary they “earn” to be a spokesperson for Musk’s pro-Trump super PAC. Winners are picked based on their “suitability to serve” and their personal story, Gober explained.
Chris Gober.
- In response, Philly DA team called this a “complete admission of liability” that Musk is running an illegal lottery under PA law.
- Because when Musk announced the giveaway in PA in October, he said, “We are going to be awarding $1 million randomly to people who have signed the petition.” DA demonstrated the video in court to the judge.
- Musk’s lawyer tried to argue there’s a difference between “randomly” and “by chance,” which is why it wasn’t an illegal lottery under PA gaming laws.
I just can’t believe that the richest person in the world hired a lawyer who would just absolutely sink him.
Kristine Fishell got a $1 million check from Elon Musk in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 20.
So, Musk announced an illegal lottery with $1 million daily prizes as a financial reward to get people to vote, and his lawyer thought that he could get him out of liability by disclosing that the lottery was a fraud — and Musk was in fact pre-screening and picking winners manually and imposing extra terms on collection.
In fact, Elon Musk’s lawyers are arguing in court that they have scammed everyone who signed that petition.
This is huge.
Musk can really get in jail for that.
UPDATE: Elon Musk’s big voter giveaway took another turn.
Voters who signed up for his “million-dollar” giveaway are now filing a suit against Musk and his America PAC, saying they were misled on how the winners were chosen.