Elon Musk’s daily $1 million giveaway to voters can continue, Pennsylvania judge rules
Elon Musk’s daily $1 million giveaway to voters can continue, Pennsylvania judge rules
A Pennsylvania judge ruled Monday that Elon Musk’s daily $1 million giveaway to voters can continue, in a victory for the tech billionaire.
A Pennsylvania judge ruled Monday that Elon Musk’s daily $1 million giveaway to voters can continue, in a victory for the tech billionaire and Donald Trump ally.
Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Angelo Foglietta rejected arguments from the city’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, who argued that the sweepstakes was an illegal lottery violating state law and must be halted immediately.
The ruling came shortly after an all-day hearing in a packed courtroom in downtown Philadelphia. The hearing was heated at times, with Krasner’s team calling Musk’s political team “shysters” who are running a “scam” and “grift” – and Musk’s team accusing the district attorney of pursuing a “dreadful violation of constitutional rights.”
Fuck you, CNN. His "giveaway" can continue... That's not what it was being called yesterday.
Headline should speak to how his LOTTERY CANNOT continue, because it was never an actual lottery as advertised and was instead an active and intentional wide scale fraud of millions upon millions of American entrants.
So electoral bribery is legal now, huh?
God bless America. Sigh.
Citizens United made it legal, nothing new in the country where Trump has a shot to win again.
🌎👨🚀🔫👨🚀 "Always has been"
Maybe always tolerated. Now it's official.
Only if you're a billionaire, since the law doesn't apply to them.
FWIW, I think this injunction was not about election integrity, but gambling laws.
But yeah, bribery is legal if you have that third comma in your net worth.
Probably time judges face consequences for their shit rulings and making a farce of the justice system
Call me a hippy but I've always had a problem with the very concept of a judge. As in, someone who gets paid (royally!) just to, well judge people. As we all know the law is anything but impartial, so my take was always that, say, the "wrong" type of people gravitate towards these posts. Keep this up for a few decades and you have a thorougly corrupt legal system (not remotely resembling a "justice" system).
It's not as if I have any workable alternatives, but still the very concept feels wrong to me somehow.
You are just describing the Federalist Society.
And a lot of judges run for office. You have to act tough to get reelected, which means "tough on crime".
Judges are a heavily flawed attempt on impartiality when poor people do crimes for different reasons than the state and rich commit them.
A rich man will never loiter, a poor person might have to. A state can declare war and pardon its commanders even with rape and murder illegal for everyone else.
Everyone and everything can be corrupted. Your train of thought that the "wrong" type of people gravitate towards these posts is taking a biased approach. It's closer to reality to say that the vested interest in corrupting these positions will always be a strong contestant to the rule of fair and unbiased law.
No legal system can unflinchingly endure the internal and external manipulations seeking to exploit it because regardless of how much we intend its fairness, we ourselves are unfair and malleable - intentionally or not.
guillotine?
public disembowelment
This ruling is just on the emergency order to shut down the lottery which would end tomorrow anyway because tomorrow is election day.
There is still a criminal case proceeding.
Can someone please eli5 me why this legal? This is truly above my pay grade apparently
Heard he doesn't give the money away as a lottery, but to pre-selected people, who plays "the random voter" guy.
But what a shit show regardless.
Somebody check that judge's finances!
It's not necessarily legal.
The judge hasn't ruled yet on whether Musk broke the law. He simply declined to issue a preliminary injunction.
A preliminary injunction tells someone to stop what they are doing while the court case plays out. In order to get a preliminary injunction, you have to convince a judge that there will be irreparable harm by letting someone continue.
In other words, a judge might rule against an injunction but nevertheless end up ruling against the defendant. Especially if the judge thinks the harm has already been done.
I believe you dropped an important "not"
He's rich.
It all started with the Powell memo, which set off a movement to legalise corruption in the US.
The judge’s ruling was on Krasner’s emergency motion to shut down the sweepstakes right away. There is still an underlying case on the merits of whether Musk’s giveaway is illegal under state gaming law.
Just to be clear, this wasn't the judge ruling that it was legal, it was the judge deciding not to issue an emergency order immediately halting the lottery. I'm honestly not surprised given the fact that there is only a day left and the damage is already done.
“Our intent all along is to only provide compensation to registered voters and US citizens, and avoid any chance that we are somehow providing funds to foreign nationals or someone with ill-intent,” Young said.
Young, the super PAC’s treasurer, said the group received plenty of sign-ups from people who weren’t registered to vote – and those people “received a follow-up opportunity and were encouraged to check their registration status,” Young testified.
If there was any doubt that they were using this to get people to register to vote, this added detail should make it pretty clear. They were telling people who weren't registered to register in order to get paid / enter a lottery.
If there was any doubt that they were using this to get people to register to vote, this added detail should make it pretty clear. They were telling people who weren't registered to register in order to get paid / enter a lottery.
Which is super illegal, so they just admitted it in court. They don’t care though because if it works they just get the carrot to pardon them.
Damn, the crime was already committed. I guess there's no use in worrying about it now...
Phew! It's a Good Thing he's only offering $1MILLION! If he was offering something like Water THEN we'd have an issue!
Crucial context, the reason for the legality:
“The $1 million recipients are not chosen by chance,” Gober said Monday. “We know exactly who will be announced as the $1 million recipient today and tomorrow.”
I checked the wording and it appears it never said the choice was going to be random! Devious.In announcing the giveaway, Musk said: “We are going to be awarding $1 million randomly to people who have signed the petition,” referring to his petition in support of the Constitution.
Election interference
Guess that judge was one of the "winners"
That is some buuuulllllshit.