Philly DA sues to halt Elon Musk’s $1 million voter giveaway in Pennsylvania

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner on Monday sued to halt Elon Musk’s $1 million daily giveaway to voters in battleground states including Pennsylvania, calling it an illegal lottery that skirts state requirements and violates consumer protection laws.

The suit, filed in Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia, is the first legal action challenging the controversial sweepstakes launched earlier this month by Musk’s America PAC. It comes a week after the U.S. Justice Department warned the tech billionaire that the giveaway violates federal laws banning inducements to voters.

So far, Musk has ignored that warning and continued his pledge to dole out awards to registered voters in seven battleground states every day until Election Day. His PAC has given away more than $9 million in just over a week — nearly half of it to Pennsylvania voters.

The lawsuit grants Krasner, a progressive prosecutor and frequent target of Republican ire, the opportunity to take on Musk in court as he’s emerged as one of GOP nominee Donald Trump’s chief surrogates in the state in the waning days of an extraordinarily close and contentious presidential race.

“America PAC and Musk must be stopped, immediately, before the upcoming Presidential Election on Nov. 5,” Krasner’s lawsuit said. “That is because America PAC and Musk hatched their illegal lottery scheme to influence voters in that election.”

A representative for America PAC, which has committed nearly $118 million to reelect Trump, did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

According to the PAC’s website, the sweepstakes is “exclusively open to registered voters in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina” — all key battleground states in which Musk has mobilized a campaign to turn out voters for Trump. To be eligible, participants must sign a petition affirming their support of the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution.

Musk handed out the first oversize check at an Oct. 19 pro-Trump rally in Harrisburg and has followed it up with daily prizes — often touted in glossy video interviews with the winners on X.

But the giveaways drew almost immediate scrutiny from election law experts, who said that by opening the contest only to registered voters, Musk appeared to be offering items of value to battleground state residents in exchange for registering to vote — a violation of federal law.

After the U.S. Justice Department warned the PAC last week of that apparent violation in a letter, Musk defended his giveaways during an online town hall event Friday on X.

“To be clear, this is not a petition to vote for or register for anyone,” he said. “It’s really a petition in support of the Constitution of the United States, and in particular, freedom of speech and the right to bear arms.”

More than 280,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania had signed the petition to enter as of last week, according to the PAC. And Musk has continued to give away nearly $5 million in prizes to registered voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. The last listed award in Pennsylvania was granted to a Lancaster voter on Saturday, according to America PAC’s website.

But while Pennsylvania laws prohibit paying bribes in exchange for votes, there is no statute equivalent to the federal prohibition barring inducements for registering to vote.

Instead, in his lawsuit Monday, Krasner marshaled a novel legal argument, casting Musk’s giveaways as a lottery, which under Pennsylvania law can only be run by the state and for the benefit of seniors living in the state.

Krasner also maintained that America PAC appears to be violating several elements of Pennsylvania’s consumer protection laws — including by failing to publish detailed lottery rules or to demonstrate how it is protecting the personal information of participants.

“Though Musk says that a winner’s selection is ‘random,’ that appears to be false,” the lawsuit says. “Multiple winners that have been selected are individuals who have shown up at Trump rallies in Pennsylvania.”

Krasner has asked the court to issue an injunction barring the continued operation of the giveaways in Pennsylvania.

The case had been assigned to Judge Anne Marie Coyle, one of the few elected Republicans on the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court. She set an emergency hearing for Friday.

But Monday afternoon, the court’s president judge, Nina Wright-Padilla, exercised her authority to designate the assignment of all election-related cases to transfer the suit to Judge Angelo Foglietta, who was first elected to the bench as a Democrat in 2011. It was not clear from court dockets whether he intended to keep the hearing schedule previously set by Coyle.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden was asked by reporters about the giveaways Monday as he voted in his home state of Delaware.

“I think it’s totally inappropriate,” he said of Musk’s contest. He did not offer any opinion, though, on whether he thought it was illegal.

Staff writer Fallon Roth contributed to this article.

Read the complaint: