Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk has forcefully ramped up his efforts to help re-elect former President Donald Trump, raising eyebrows across the political world and inviting questions about the legality of some of his tactics.
Musk hit the road last week and during the weekend to help galvanize support for the Republican nominee — a newsworthy undertaking on its own, but all the more so because of the things he has done along the way. Musk on Thursday pushed a debunked conspiracy theory about election fraud and announced he would give away $100 to every registered Pennsylvania voter who signed a petition supporting the First and Second amendments to the Constitution.
Two days later, Musk alarmed some officials and legal experts when he rolled out a $1 million lottery-style giveaway for people in Pennsylvania who sign the petition.
Meanwhile, news reports have chronicled some of the issues facing America PAC, a political action committee funded by Musk to help boost Trump in the home stretch of the campaign. Musk has given almost $75 million to the PAC, according to a Federal Election Commission filing — a sum that catapults the SpaceX and Tesla founder to the top of the GOP donor circuit.
Reuters, citing unnamed sources involved in the committee’s work, reported that the PAC is having trouble hitting door-knocking goals in some swing states and is investigating claims that some canvassers lied about the number of voters they contacted.
The Guardian reported that roughly a quarter of door-knocks carried out by the PAC in the crucial swing states of Arizona and Nevada were flagged by a canvassing app used by the committee as potentially fraudulent, according to leaked data and sources familiar with the matter.
NBC News has not independently verified either report. The committee and the app mentioned in the Guardian report did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
Musk has established himself as one of Trump’s most high-profile and vociferous supporters, saying the race will decide “the fate of Western civilization” and constantly advocating for the former president on X, the social media platform he owns.
Trump has welcomed Musk’s support. The two men rallied together earlier this month in Butler, Pennsylvania, where the former president survived an assassination attempt over the summer. Musk, who leaped onto the stage in a black “Make America Great Again” hat, described himself to the crowd as “not just MAGA, I’m dark MAGA.”
In appearances and online, Musk has made incendiary statements about immigration and embraced controversial claims about widespread voter fraud.
In a post on X on Saturday, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson accused him of “spreading dangerous disinformation.” Musk fired back: “Shame on you for blatantly lying to the public!” (Investigations and academic studies have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the U.S.)
Musk’s campaign sprint started Thursday with a town hall hosted at a high school in Folsom, Pennsylvania, a state that both campaigns consider a must-win. The richest man in the world, wearing a yellow cap and standing in front of an American flag, promoted the discredited theory that Dominion Voting Systems was part of a plot to rig U.S. elections.
“When you have mail-in ballots and no proof of citizenship, it’s almost impossible to prove cheating,” Musk said, replying to an audience member’s question about alleged election fraud.
“Statistically there are some very strange things that happen that are statistically incredibly unlikely. There’s always this question of, say, the Dominion voting machines. It is weird that, I think, they were used in Philadelphia and in Maricopa County [in Arizona] but not in a lot of other places. Doesn’t that seem like a heck of a coincidence?”
Dominion has repeatedly rejected any claims that it was involved in efforts to manipulate elections. In a statement last week, a spokesperson for the company disputed Musk’s comments.
“Fact: Dominion does not serve Philadelphia County. Fact: Dominion’s voting systems are already based on voter verified paper ballots. Fact: Hand counts and audits of such paper ballots have repeatedly proven that Dominion machines produce accurate results. These are not matters of opinion. They are verifiable facts,” the spokesperson said in an email.
Musk’s barnstorming continued Saturday with a town hall event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he announced that his PAC would award $1 million daily to a “random” registered voter who signs a petition supporting the First and Second amendments to the Constitution.
He has already given out two checks.
The giveaway plan was met with immediate pushback from some election law experts. Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA and an NBC News election law analyst, wrote in a post on his website Saturday that the payments were “clearly illegal.”
“Essentially what you’re doing is you are creating a lottery. You’re creating a lottery where the only people eligible to participate in the lottery are people who register to vote, or are registered to vote, and that’s illegal,” Hasen told NBC News on Sunday.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat and a surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Musk’s plan was “deeply concerning” and “something that law enforcement could take a look at.”
It was not clear whether federal officials are looking into the payments. In an email, a spokeswoman for the Federal Election Commission declined to comment on “specific activities” and “potential enforcement matters that may come before the agency.”
Trump is not the only presidential candidate backed by a famous mogul. Harris is supported by the billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who has spoken at Democratic campaign events and made the case for the Democratic nominee’s policy plans in interviews.
Musk has mocked Cuban on X. In a post last week, Cuban shot back with some choice words of his own: “You can’t stop thinking about me @elonmusk Can you ? It’s ok. I understand. If I supported a candidate that was so incompetent I had to take over and fund their ground game, I would be looking for a distraction too.”