Elon Musk promised to give some Pa. voters $100 ahead of the 2024 election. A lawsuit accuses him of not paying everyone.
The suit brought by a Bucks County resident said he is owed a check for more than $20,000 after working as canvasser and soliciting signatures for the pledge.
It was an offer almost too good to be true: Register to vote in Pennsylvania and sign a petition in support of the First and Second Amendments ahead of the 2024 presidential election, and get a $100 check from the richest person on Earth.
And for more cash, convince others to do the same.
“Earn money for supporting something you already believe in!,” Elon Musk wrote in an October post on X, the social media platform he owns.
Legal challenges followed, including from Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. But those went nowhere.
All that was left for Elon Musk and America PAC to do was pony up the money. But according to a new federal lawsuit, they haven’t paid all they owe.
The complaint, filed Tuesday in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on behalf of an unnamed Bucks County resident, accuses Musk and the conservative political action committee of breach of contract and failure to fulfill the promise.
Musk, who is the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX as well as the owner of X, campaigned vigorously for President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania and now oversees the Department of Government Efficiency, which is responsible for the upheaval of the federal government and its workforce. And he has become one of Trump’s closest advisers, though Musk will reportedly leave his role in the administration in the coming weeks, sources inside the White House told Politico.
Attorneys for the Bucks County resident asked the court to use a pseudonym because their client “reasonably fears retribution” and “Elon Musk also has a reputation for seeking revenge against those he believes have wronged him,” according to a court filing.
The Bucks County resident represented in the suit worked as a canvasser for America PAC leading up to the presidential election (as of October, the PAC paid canvassers $30 an hour). While knocking on doors he solicited signatures for the pledge, the suit says. The canvasser is allegedly owed more than $20,000 after having been paid an undisclosed amount for some of his referrals.
The canvasser had contacted the PAC repeatedly and has made “multiple attempts to receive full payment for his referrals, but to no avail,” the complaint says.
Because the Bucks man was an employee of America PAC, the complaint also accuses the organization of violating Pennsylvania’s Wage Payment and Collection Law for not paying for the referrals.
“Our client relied on that promise because he believed in Elon, but unfortunately, that promise was not kept,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, a Boston-based attorney who filed the complaint, said in a statement. “It appears the promise was broken for many others as well.”
The lawsuit is a proposed class action on behalf of all registered voters who signed the petition, or successfully got someone else to sign it, but did not receive payment. The complaint does not say how many people are owed money, or how much.
America PAC is “committed to paying for every legitimate petition” and has already paid canvassers tens of millions of dollars, spokesperson Andrew Romeo said.
“While we don’t yet know who this ‘John Doe’ plaintiff is and can’t speak to their specific circumstances, we can say that we are also committed to rooting out fraud and have the right to withhold payments to fraudsters,“ Romeo said in a statement.
America PAC said on its website that it had been ensuring the eligibility of signers and its goal was to get payments out by Nov. 30. People may not have received their payment if the information on the petition did not match the voter file. Others were delayed because of “suspected bot activity.”
If payments exceed $600, the IRS requires the recipient to fill a W9 tax form to be able to receive the funds, America PAC says.
None of those situations apply to the Bucks County man who filed the lawsuit, said Jeremy Abay, a New Jersey-based attorney for the canvasser.
“Evading debts under the guise of rooting out fraud is Mr. Musk’s modus operandi,” Abay said.
Musk attempted to gamify the 2024 presidential election when, in October, he offered cash prizes for people to register to vote.
The original offer was $47 — as Trump ran to be the 47th president — to sign or refer a registered voter to sign America PAC’s petition in support of the First and Second Amendments. Then, the PAC had a “special offer” for Pennsylvania voters — $100. In addition, Musk said he would randomly select from the signatories winners of a $1 million prize, which some voters received at America PAC-sponsored town halls across the state.
» READ MORE: More Pa. Dems got $100 checks that may be from Elon Musk’s PAC. Some aren’t cashing them in protest.
Those who received their money were ecstatic. But the petition and checks created a puzzling scenario when almost a dozen Pennsylvanians — including some Democrats — told The Inquirer they had received $100 checks without having signed the petition or referring someone to it. The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office received about 20 complaints as a result.
This was just one of Musk’s pro-Trump endeavors on the 2024 presidential campaign trail. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO held a town hall at Ridley High School in Delaware County in October (the petition was a legally questionable ticket into the event). It was the first of a series of town halls across the commonwealth, a crucial battleground state in the presidential contest.
His intense efforts — spending $277 million to elect Trump in 2024 and setting up a “war room” in Pittsburgh — awarded him the gratitude of some Pennsylvania Republicans and Trump, who now holds Musk as a close adviser.