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Even if Elon Musk succeeds in ingratiating himself back into Donald Trump’s good graces, the Tesla CEO faces mounting civil litigation, including a new lawsuit seeking to hold him liable for a “brazen scheme to bribe Wisconsin citizens to vote.”
It is one of the nearly 100 lawsuits filed by Norm Eisen’s Democracy Defenders Fund, and he discussed the lawsuit in a Substack Live that aired on Wednesday.
“The latest one was to seek an injunction for the Musk campaign actions where Musk makes payments to citizens of states in parallel with electoral activities,” Eisen told All Rise News. “We filed that lawsuit in Wisconsin today seeking to make sure that that pattern does not revert.”
In the recent judicial elections, Musk used his wealth and his social media platform to back the pro-Trump candidate Brad Schimel — a 2020 election denier — over Susan Crawford. Musk’s efforts included $100 payments to induce people to sign petitions and $1 million lotteries. Crawford won the election handily anyway.
“By offering and paying Wisconsin citizens amounts far greater than $1 to vote, Defendants violated Wisconsin’s election bribery law,” Eisen’s lawsuit says.
Eisen has brought other lawsuits against Musk and DOGE, including one in which a federal judge issued an injunction blocking the dismantling of USAID.
“The greatest issue that we have to look for is that Donald Trump has threatened Elon Musk now in their breakup several times, and that could create substantial liability issues for Mr. Musk,” Eisen said. “We've issued a big report at Democracy Defenders Action laying out all of the different ways that Trump could expose Musk to risk if he investigates SpaceX or X or xAI or Tesla, if he pulls government contracts, if he investigates Musk.”
Musk walked back criticism of Trump in the wake of such threats.
“On the other hand, Trump has some risk too, because the government has become very reliant on Elon Musk, and so that's a two edged sword,” Eisen said.
Read Norm Eisen’s full lawsuit here.
Editor’s Note:
A little more than a year ago, Norm and I attended Trump’s criminal trial every day in Manhattan Criminal Court for Just Security, where he was one of my editors. Our conversation yesterday in the video archived above touched briefly upon Trump’s criminal appeal and his use of the military against protesters in Los Angeles.
We also discussed Norm’s ongoing efforts to hold the Trump administration accountable through litigation and The Contrarian, the news organization that he co-founded with Jen Rubin.
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