Elon Musk’s US$1 million voter giveaway winners are not picked at random, lawyer says

Elon Musk’s pro-Trump group does not choose the winners of its US$1 million-a-day giveaway to registered voters at random, but instead picks people who would be good spokespeople for its agenda, a lawyer for the billionaire said on Monday.

Musk lawyer Chris Gober was trying to persuade a Pennsylvania judge that the giveaway was not an “illegal lottery”, as Philadelphia district attorney Lawrence Krasner alleged in a lawsuit seeking to block the contest ahead of Tuesday’s US presidential election.

“There is no prize to be won, instead recipients must fulfil contractual obligations to serve as a spokesperson for the PAC,” Gober said in the hearing before Judge Angelo Foglietta.

Krasner, a Democrat, sued Musk and his political action committee in state court on October 28 to try to block the giveaway, which he called an illegal lottery that violates state consumer protection laws.

A lawyer for Krasner’s office, John Summers, called Gober’s comments a “complete admission of liability”.

“We just heard this guy say, my boss, my client, called this random,” Summers said. “We promised people that they were going to participate in a random process, but it’s a process where we preselect people.”