Pennsylvania challenge of Elon Musk’s $1M-a-day voter sweepstakes moves to federal court

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Pennsylvania prosecutor’s effort to shut down Elon Musk’s $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes moved to federal court on Thursday after a state judge let both sides debate their grievances in a hearing skipped by the world’s richest man.

Judge Angelo Foglietta agreed that Musk, as a named defendant in the lawsuit filed by Democratic District Attorney Larry Krasner, should have attended the hearing in person, but he declined to immediately sanction the tech mogul.

Musk’s lawyer, Matthew Haverstick, said he’s a busy man who could not simply “materialize” in the courtroom hours after the hearing was scheduled. Krasner’s team challenged the notion that the founder of SpaceX could not make it Philadelphia, prompting a quick retort from the judge.

“Counsel, he’s not going to get in a rocket ship and land on the building,” Foglietta replied.

The huge giveaways to registered voters come from Musk’s political organization, which aims to boost Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

After his lawyers argued that claims of federal election interference are involved, Foglietta put the state case on hold pending a decision in federal court, where the case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Gerald J. Pappert, a Republican former Pennsylvania attorney general appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama. No hearings there were immediately scheduled.

However, late Thursday, Krasner filed a petition to move the case back to state court in Democrat-led Philadelphia. That’s where he had filed the his lawsuit Monday, which accused Musk and his PAC of running a dubious lottery in the tense run-up to Tuesday’s election.

Krasner’s lawyers noted that four of the first dozen winners appeared to be from Pennsylvania, perhaps the key prize in the tight presidential race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Is it just a coincidence that this is the state that has the largest electoral votes? I don’t think so,” lawyer John Summers argued at the hearing Thursday morning.

Posts by Musk’s America PAC on X, the social media platform he purchased, indicate he’s given away 13 checks of $1 million since the first one in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 19. Other winners came from the battleground states of Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan.

Krasner’s lawyers noted that Musk and the America PAC had “brazenly” continued the lottery every day this week, including Thursday morning, despite Krasner’s legal bid to shut it down. The sweepstakes is set to run through Election Day, open to people in too-close-to-call states who can show that they’re registered to vote and sign a petition supporting the Constitution.

“They’re doing things in the dark,” Summers told the judge. “We don’t know the rules being followed. We don’t know how they’re supposedly picking people at random … It’s an outrage.”

Election law experts have raised questions about whether it violates federal law barring someone from paying others to vote. Musk has cast the money as both a prize as well as earnings for work as a spokesperson for the group.

Krasner has said he could still consider criminal charges, as he’s tasked with protecting both lotteries and the integrity of elections. In the lawsuit, he said the defendants are “indisputably violating” Pennsylvania’s lottery laws.

Both Trump and Kamala Harris have made repeated visits to the state as they fight for Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes.

Musk, who also owns Tesla and X, has gone all in on Trump this election, saying he thinks civilization is at stake. He is undertaking much of the get-out-the-vote effort for Trump through his super PAC, which can raise and spend unlimited sums of money.

He has committed more than $70 million to the super PAC to help Trump and other Republicans win in November.

___ Associated Press reporter Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg contributed to this report.