Musk to face lawsuit over illegal $1M election lottery

Elon Musk has been ordered by a judge to face a lawsuit that claims he ran an illegal $1 million election lottery during President Donald Trump’s White House run in 2024, Knewz.com can reveal. The controversy-plagued billionaire has been accused of defrauding voters into signing a petition to support the U.S. Constitution, offering a chance to win cash.

Arizona resident Jacqueline McAferty claimed Musk and his political action committee, America PAC, induced voters in several battleground states to sign the petition and provide personal information including their addresses and phone numbers, promising to choose one person per day to win $1 million. The lawsuit alleges voters never had a chance to collect the winnings. The Tesla and SpaceX boss did his best to have the suit dismissed, listing “red flags” as proof he had not run the alleged illegal lottery. But U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2014, pointed to other statements suggesting the defendants were “awarding” the money and that the $1 million could be won. “It is plausible that plaintiff justifiably relied on those statements to believe that defendants were objectively offering her the chance to enter a random lottery, even if that is not what they subjectively intended to do,” the judge wrote. While Musk claimed voters who signed were not negatively impacted by providing their contact information, the judge said a political data brokerage will respond under oath to what the information is worth.

The world’s richest man did all he could to help Trump defeat former Vice President Kamala Harris in November — including introducing his “lottery,” which faced criticism in other corners. Philadelphia District Attorney Lawrence Krasner aimed to block Musk’s contest. “I’ll be seeking a lot more money than that for what Elon Musk and America PAC have done,” Krasner said. Pennsylvania Judge Angelo Foglietta, however, ruled Musk’s sweepstakes was not illegal at the time.

Despite Musk spending so much time hyping up Trump, just months into the president’s second term, the tech billionaire made a dramatic reversal, claiming he would be forming another party — the America Party — to give people their “freedom” back. “When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste [and] graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he owns. The idea came as Musk was bashing Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill, claiming it would add trillions to the U.S. national debt. Musk has since backed off from moving forward with the America Party.

Vice President J.D. Vance, meanwhile, reminded Musk in a recent interview appearance on The Ingraham Angle to stay in Trump’s corner. “My advice to Elon would be to try to fix the Republican Party,” Vance said on the Fox News show. “Try to push it in your own way. Disagree with me all you want, disagree with the president of the United States, but don’t pretend that you can make a big difference with a third party.” Musk, Vance said, “would make a much bigger difference if he stayed loyal to President Trump’s Republican Party, and if he had disagreements, express those disagreements from the inside as opposed [to] from the outside.”