A new lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses tech billionaire Elon Musk and his super PAC of failing to pay canvassers who supported his pro-Trump political operations in 2024. During the final stretch of the 2024 campaign, Musk and his political group, America PAC, offered $100 to registered voters in battleground states who signed a petition supporting free speech and gun rights and another $100 for every additional voter they convinced to sign the petition. The goal was to excite conservative voters and elect then-candidate Donald Trump, who narrowly won Pennsylvania in November.
A man from the Philadelphia suburbs, who filed the lawsuit anonymously because he fears retribution, claims he is owed $20,000 for gathering signatures in Pennsylvania. The lawsuit asserts there could be at least another 100 victims of Musk’s alleged breach of contract. This follows press reports about allegedly late or missing payments from the super PAC around the presidential election.
“This lawsuit is about keeping promises,” the man’s attorney, Shannon Liss-Riordan, said. “He was expecting to be able to pay his bills because of this promise.
Musk faces lawsuit over unpaid canvassers.
He was pounding the pavement during the campaign because Elon Musk asked him to. He believed in Elon Musk.”
America PAC spokesman Andrew Romeo denied any wrongdoing. “America PAC is committed to paying for every legitimate petition signature, which is evidenced by the fact that we have paid tens of millions of dollars to canvassers for their hard work in support of our mission,” Romeo said in a statement, adding that the pro-Trump group is “committed to rooting out fraud” and has “the right to withhold payments to fraudsters.”
In the past week, Musk revived his 2024-style giveaways in Wisconsin, offering $1 million cash prizes in support of a conservative candidate for the state Supreme Court.
Musk and his super PAC denied claims that these giveaways to voters violated federal laws against vote-buying or operated as an illegal state lottery. In October, the Justice Department investigated the $1 million sweepstakes for registered voters. Additionally, the Philadelphia district attorney filed in state court to get the daily giveaways shut down, claiming they were an unlawful operation.
Liss-Riordan, who filed the latest lawsuit Tuesday in Pennsylvania federal court, has previously sued X, the Musk-owned social media platform formerly known as Twitter, in a separate case concerning Musk’s takeover of the company. She was also involved in efforts to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot in Massachusetts based on the US Constitution’s “insurrectionist ban.”
Image Credits: Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash
Cameron is a highly regarded contributor in the rapidly evolving fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. His articles delve into the theoretical underpinnings of AI, the practical applications of machine learning across industries, ethical considerations of autonomous systems, and the societal impacts of these disruptive technologies.
