It turns out that Elon Musk failed to keep his promise to pay voters in swing states who signed his petition supporting Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election, according to a new lawsuit.
Plaintiffs in the national class action suit, filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania last week, say that Musk’s America PAC never paid them for signing the petition. The lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit are three people who lived in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Georgia at the time, one of whom worked as a canvasser for the PAC in Michigan and Georgia.
Musk spent roughly $300 million on the 2024 election in support of Trump, and offered initial payments of $47 to signatories of a petition supporting his PAC, later boosting those payments to $100. If a signatory referred the petition to others, they were offered additional payments for each successful referral.
At the time, the tech oligarch said that signing the petition demonstrated support for the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution. The goal of the cash payments was to increase voter registration and turnout in battleground states. But according to the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, the whole thing was a bait-and-switch.
The lawsuit states that the plaintiffs are in contact “with numerous others who referred voters to sign the America PAC petition, who are likewise frustrated that they did not receive full payments for their referrals.” They expect “more than 100 Class Members” in the lawsuit who are owed more than $5 million.
“This case is about a broken promise: Elon Musk promised supporters that they would be paid for signing a petition and referring others to do the same,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, a co-founder of the law firm Lichten & Liss-Riordan representing the plaintiffs, told CNBC. “Our clients relied on that promise because they believed in Elon, but unfortunately, that promise was not kept. It appears the promise was broken for many others as well.”
Musk’s election investment and promised payments gave him what he wanted in the end. Not only did Trump win the election, but Musk was handsomely rewarded with a powerful role in the administration “cutting costs” and gaining access to sensitive data within the government under his Department of Government Efficiency initiative. Meanwhile, he continues to rake in billions in government contracts. But just like his beneficiary Trump, Musk is allegedly stiffing the people he promised to pay and getting sued over it.
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