Musk insists that his '$1 M giveaway' was just a scam

Two weeks before the election, and in defiance of a warning from the Department of Justice, Pro-Trump billionaire Elon Musk announced a lottery in which he promised to award $1 million a day to swing state voters who signed onto a petition at his pro-Trump PAC. That daily giveaway was in addition to the $100 Musk had already promised to pay those who signed his petition.

This immediately generated concern, because federal law forbids paying someone to vote or register to vote. And that seemed to be exactly what Musk was promoting.

“This is a one-time ask,” Musk told the crowd shortly after announcing the $1 million prize. “Just go out there and talk to your friends and family and acquaintances and people you meet in the street and … convince them to vote. Obviously you gotta get registered, make sure they’re registered and … make sure they vote.”

Musk didn't get a chance to see if Merrick Garland would come for him. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner moved faster. And in a Philadelphia courtroom on Monday, Musk's attorneys mounted a very strange defense of Musk's "giveaway."

“There is no prize to be won," testified the secretary of Musk's "America Pac," Chris Gober. "Instead, we are setting up contractual obligations to serve as spokespeople for the PAC.”

According to his attorneys, Musk isn't running an illegal, unsanctioned lottery. Because it's not real. It's all a scam.

Except Musk's attorney's now claim that those signing the petition had no chance.

According to Gober, people were never chosen at random. They were picked because of "their personal stories" and are signing $1 million deals to be spokespeople for the PAC. And to prove just how scammy their scam of Pennsylvania voters really is, Gober claimed that the next two "winners" had already been selected and were not even from Pennsylvania.

Compare this to what Musk said when announcing this giveaway.

“We are going to be awarding $1 million randomly to people who have signed the petition, every day, from now until the election."

Musk's efforts to buy Pennsylvania for Donald Trump were blatantly illegal from the outset. But now he claims he wasn't breaking the law ... he was just lying to Trump supporters and extending hope to them that they could become wealthy just from demonstrating their loyalty. When the truth was that it was all a scam. A big fat lie.

But lying to suckers can't be illegal. Trump does it every day.

On October 8, Musk declared that he might be going to jail if Trump lost.

“I’m fucked," Musk told right-wing pundit and Nazi fan Tucker Carslon. "If he loses, I’m fucked. How long do you think my prison sentence is going to be? Do you think? Will I see my children? I don’t know.”

It's starting to seem as if the billionaire tech bro really can see the future after all.