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Elon Musk’s Lawyers Admit $1M Voter ‘Giveaway’ Was No Accident

Elon Musk’s Lawyers Admit M Voter ‘Giveaway’ Was No Accident

Elon Musk is controversial $1 million gift for voters to sign a pledge to support the First and Second Amendments was not actually a random offer, and his team acknowledged this.

During an hours-long hearing in a Philadelphia courtroom on Monday, Musk’s attorney, Chris Gober, told a judge that the $1 million was actually a “salary” that competitors earn to be a spokesperson for the pro-Trump America PAC. Winners were pre-selected based on their “fitness to serve” and personal story, not entirely chosen at random, which would fall under Philadelphia’s gambling law. Quite a way to argue in your defense that what you did wasn’t a crime because you lied to your followers in the first place.

Chris Young, another Musk deputy, summed up the team’s defense: “The opportunity to win is different from the chance to win.” Gambling requires no skill or ability to win and is subject to strict gambling laws. When Musk originally announced the gift, he explicitly said “we’re going to randomly give away $1 million.” There seemed to be no condition attached, no faith or “fitness to serve.”

After Musk announced the contest, many people immediately raised questions about whether the program was even legal for various reasons. It is illegal to pay anyone to register to vote, but contest rules required participants to be registered voters. If nothing else, the plan gave the impression that it was tying money in front of American citizens to get them to sign up. Musk has hosted pro-Trump rallies in swing states, and critics have speculated that the gift is a thinly veiled way to buy undecided voters for Trump.

A sort of Mr. Beast-esque contest, the whole charade risks turning politics further into a popularity contest to see who will go all the way and be the most “le epic” for attention.

Apparently the Department of Justice warned America PAC about the gift and the Philadelphia DA’s office took Musk in court for this.

Larry Krasner, the Philadelphia district attorney, said in court today that the so-called giveaway constituted an illegal lottery under its gambling laws and that America PAC did not sufficiently disclose to participants the information it collects. “They were cheated of their information,” Krasner testified. “It has almost unlimited uses.” He used other harsh words to insult Musk, calling the charade “cheating” and “dishonest.” Krasner’s team noted that America PAC had the winners sign an NDA agreeing not to talk about it, meaning that, in Musk’s team’s logic, the winners had to support the PAC, but without mentioning that they were trained to do so.

Musk’s team defended itself by saying that it wasn’t an illegal lottery at all, as Krasner believes, because the “winners” actually had to earn the money through work. But in closing arguments, Krasner’s team said lying to your fans is not a valid defense. “They essentially advertised this as a lottery. It is not a defense of “What I said is not true”.

Krasner’s team called the hiring of undisclosed spokespeople “one of the great scams of the last 50 years.”

However, Musk’s team told the judge that the “gift” would not go past Tuesday.

This is a developing story and we will update this post as we learn more.