MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Billionaire Elon Musk likely broke Wisconsin law when he handed out $1 million checks to voters in the 2025 state Supreme Court election, a bipartisan panel has found.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission last week referred two complaints to the Brown County district attorney’s office, which can choose to bring criminal charges over violating the state law against election bribery. Prosecutors have 40 days to report back to the commission.
Musk, the founder of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla, was deeply involved in the effort to flip majority control of the highest court in battleground Wisconsin.
The tech titan and groups he supported spent at least $20 million on the candidate backed by Republicans, Brad Schimel. However, he lost by 10 percentage points to Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford.
A month after the lopsided loss, Musk announced that he would be spending far less on political campaigns. Spending on the election topped $100 million, making it the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history.
Prosecutors will decide if Musk should be charged over the $1 million checks
The complaints, which are confidential under state law, were brought by voters in Milwaukee and Green Bay, which is in Brown County. Musk handed out checks at a rally there just days before the election.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission, consisting of three Democrats and three Republicans, voted 5-1 in closed session on Thursday to refer the complaints to the district attorney, the commission’s spokesperson Emilee Miklas said.
Brown County District Attorney David Lasee, a Republican, did not immediately return a message seeking comment Tuesday.
The motion approved by the elections commission said it found probable cause that Musk broke Wisconsin law by making a social media post offering $1 million to people who voted in the Supreme Court election “in order to induce them to vote in that election.”
Hopefully corruption along the way doesn’t turn this into a, ya he did it, but his candidate lost so we’ll give it a pass, type situation.
likely?
Golly, I wonder what Dear Leader would say about that?
Did he really post that? And unironically I presume - blaming “The Left”. He’s the grand master of DARVO.
Everything is illegal unless they do it
No. You don’t say…
Mee-lon borke the law countless times. The president of the us of na broke the law countless times (the supreme court said that’s ok).
Who is going to enforce that?
Minimum wage employees???
Until he gets arrested, it’s meaningless.
But man you should see those strongly worded emails. I mean they are enough to make you really think for a few seconds before hitting delete.
Even if they fined him a trillion dollars he would still be a billionaire.
I want him to have to pay a million dollars to vevery person who entered. Plus a fine ten times that amount into an election integrity fund.
No shit
So fucking do something already.
He did. They should make his punishment consist primarily of public service. Like 20,000 hours that has to be completed within 4 years.
His money is endless, but not his time.
If he has to spend eight hours a day 5 days a week for the next 4 years picking up trash along the side of the road, he’s not going to have time to try to interfere with elections.
And he may actually learn a lesson about hard work. That’s what justice is supposed to look like.
Cruel and unusual! Working a real labor job? He’d be dead within a week!
So win win then
I like this, but partially because the maths makes it even worse than you stated:
20,000 h / (365.25 d * 4) ≈ 13.7 hrs/day
Sounds fair to me.
If he has to spend eight hours a day 5 days a week for the next 4 years picking up trash along the side of the road, he’s not going to have time to try to interfere with elections.
That still leaves the weekend and the remaining 16 hours a day. You would think that’s not enough time to do anything extracurricular, but you might be surprised how much sleep can be skipped during a drug-fueled manic episode.
Fine him equal to the money he spent on the election. And make him pay it back by working minimum wage with no access to his wealth until he’s paid his debts.
Minimum wage would skyrocket.
His time is not endless?? This really is the worst timeline
“Elon broke the law”
There fixed it for tou
Isn’t it fun that the media offers a presumption of innocence when we’re talking about our evil billionaire oligarchs despite hard facts to the contrary, but we get a presumption of guilt even when there is zero evidence to back it up?
Removed by mod
If you are worth a trillion dollars, you can’t break the law
