Elon Musk has settled two lawsuits accusing his America PAC of fraud over $1 million voter giveaways, ending a two-year fight critics cast as illegal election inducement.
UPI reported that the Thursday settlement closed litigation over America PAC’s cash prizes during the 2024 election cycle, with the terms left undisclosed.
The super PAC had pledged $1 million a day to registered voters in seven swing states who signed a petition supporting free speech and the right to bear arms. Several voters later sued Musk and the committee, claiming the prizes were not the random drawings first described.
Those claims sat inside a wider push by Democratic officials and election agencies to halt the giveaways. The Justice Department warned in 2024 that the prizes might violate federal law. Wisconsin’s attorney general sued to stop the plan. The state’s elections commission later forwarded bribery complaints to a local prosecutor.
Musk kept the program running and expanded it into other races into 2026. The civil cases are now settled. The political fight over who may spend money to mobilize voters is not.
America PAC framed the 2024 effort around a simple ask. Sign a petition defending free speech and the Second Amendment, and enter drawings for $1 million.
Musk’s side first presented the winners as random. CNN later reported that his lawyers told a court the winners were “not chosen by chance.” The lawyers also said winners were expected to represent the PAC and support Donald Trump’s candidacy.
Critics called the whole design a tool to lift Trump. The petitions still centered on speech and gun rights, issues lawful political committees raise every cycle.
Arizona plaintiff Joy Havrick was among the voters who sued. Her lawyers argued she would never have signed or handed over personal information if she had known the selection rules.
Havrick’s lawyers wrote in the filing:
“Had Plaintiff been aware that the lottery was not random, or that she did not have a fair chance to win the prize, or that her selection hinged on her perceived favorability to Defendants as a marketing prop, she would not have signed or supported the America PAC petition and would not have provided her PII [Personal Identifying Information] to Defendants,”
Havrick’s suit cast her as a “marketing prop.” That is the plaintiff’s charge, not a finding of fact. The settlement ends the case without publishing any admission of liability or a dollar figure.
In 2024, the Justice Department notified Musk and America PAC that the giveaways might break federal law. The notice did not, on the public record in this reporting, produce a criminal case tied to the settled suits.
Wisconsin became the sharpest state fight. Attorney General Josh Kaul sued Musk the prior year to halt the plan. In July, the Wisconsin Elections Commission voted 5-1 to send two complaints to the Brown County district attorney, accusing Musk of violating an anti-bribery law.
Those complaints followed $1 million checks America PAC wrote to two Wisconsin voters during a push to elect conservative Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel. Schimel lost to liberal candidate Susan Crawford.
Prosecutors received the referrals. The UPI account does not report charges from that track, or a final outcome in Kaul’s earlier case, as part of the settlement news.
The Thursday deal ends a two-year legal battle over the fraud claims. Settlement details remain private. No court ruling on the merits is described in the report.
That gap matters. Lawsuits can force disclosure, burn time, and chill spending even when no jury ever decides the core charge. Democratic officeholders in Wisconsin used state election machinery and the attorney general’s office to contest Musk’s spending. Federal lawyers flagged possible criminal exposure. Private plaintiffs alleged deception over how winners were chosen.
Through it all, America PAC continued writing large checks and carried the giveaway model into later elections into 2026. The committee treated the prizes as political outreach tied to petition signatures, not as a quiet retreat under pressure.
Voters who took the money and signed the petitions got a clear trade on the surface: support free speech and gun rights, enter a prize pool. Musk’s lawyers later described a selection process that was not pure chance and that favored people expected to stand with the PAC and with Trump. Plaintiffs called that a bait-and-switch. Musk’s side settled rather than try the claims to judgment, at least in the two cases now closed.
Nothing in the disclosed record shows the petitions dropped their speech and Second Amendment language. Nothing shows the PAC refunded the political purpose of the drive. The fight was over method, labeling, and whether big cash prizes crossed into unlawful inducement under federal or Wisconsin rules.
Large political prizes draw regulators fast when the spender is Musk and the cause is conservative turnout. Kaul’s suit, the commission’s 5-1 referral, and the 2024 Justice Department notice formed a stacked pressure campaign across state and federal lanes.
Bribery statutes and federal election rules exist for a reason. Buying votes is illegal. Paying people to sign a rights petition and enter a drawing sits in a different legal neighborhood, one committees and courts have argued over for years. The plaintiffs’ fraud theory turned on randomness and personal data, not on a proven cash-for-ballot scheme spelled out in this reporting.
Schimel still lost. Crawford still won. The Wisconsin checks did not deliver a conservative court seat. The legal campaign against Musk continued anyway until the civil settlements landed.
Readers are left with a short public ledger. Two lawsuits accused America PAC of fraud over the $1 million giveaways. Lawyers conceded the picks were “not chosen by chance.” Havrick said she was used as a prop. Democratic officials in Wisconsin tried to stop the operation cold. Musk settled on undisclosed terms and kept spending into 2026.
Open questions remain where the reporting stops: the exact court dockets, the payment terms, the fate of the Brown County referrals, and which seven swing states hosted the daily prizes. Those blanks belong to the parties and the sealed papers, not to guesswork.
When officials and activists treat aggressive conservative voter contact as a scandal first and a legal question second, donors notice, and so do the voters who were told free speech and gun rights petitions were the price of entry.
