Lawsuit claims Elon Musk stiffed canvassers who helped his 2024 campaign efforts

Washington (CNN) — A new lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses tech billionaire Elon Musk and his super PAC of failing to pay canvassers who helped his pro-Trump political operation in 2024.

During the final stretch of the 2024 campaign, Musk and his political group, America PAC, offered $100 to registered voters in battleground states who signed a petition supporting free speech and gun rights, and another $100 for every additional voter they convinced to sign the petition. The goal was to excite conservative voters and elect then-candidate Donald Trump – who narrowly won Pennsylvania in November.

A man from the Philadelphia suburbs – who filed the lawsuit anonymously because he says he fears retribution – claims he is owed $20,000 for gathering signatures in Pennsylvania. The lawsuit claims there could be at least another 100 victims of Musk’s alleged breach-of-contract. This comes after press reports about allegedly late or missing payments from the super PAC around the presidential election.

“This lawsuit is about keeping promises,” the man’s attorney, Shannon Liss-Riordan, told CNN. “He was expecting to be able to pay his bills because of this promise. He was pounding the pavement during the campaign because Elon Musk asked him too. He believed in Elon Musk.”

America PAC spokesman Andrew Romeo denied wrongdoing when asked about the lawsuit.

“America PAC is committed to paying for every legitimate petition signature, which is evidenced by the fact that we have paid tens of millions of dollars to canvassers for their hard work in support of our mission,” Romeo said in a statement, adding that the pro-Trump group is “committed to rooting out fraud” and has “the right to withhold payments to fraudsters.”

In the past week, Musk revived his 2024-style giveaways in Wisconsin, offering $1 million cash prizes as he campaigned in support of a conservative candidate for the state Supreme Court.

Musk and his super PAC denied claims during the 2024 campaign that their cash giveaways to voters violated federal laws against vote-buying or that it operated an illegal state lottery.

The Justice Department warned the super PAC in October about its $1 million sweepstakes for registered voters. And the Philadelphia district attorney, a Democrat, tried and failed in state court to get the daily giveaways shut down because, he claimed, it was an unlawful operation.

Liss-Riordan, who filed the latest lawsuit Tuesday in Pennsylvania federal court, has previously sued X, the Musk-owned social media platform formerly called Twitter, in a case about Musk’s takeover of the company. She was also involved in an unsuccessful effort to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot in Massachusetts because of the US Constitution’s “insurrectionist ban.”

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