Musk faces new legal action over a campaign to promote last year's election. A federal judge said Wednesday that Arizona resident Jacqueline McAferty has the right to sue Musk and that Musk must respond to the lawsuit.
Last year, in support of Trump's campaign, Musk promised voters in seven battleground states a chance to win $1 million if they signed a petition.
However, McAferty said that based on Musk's statement, she believed the winner was chosen at random. In fact, these winners were handpicked with the goal of having these winners become spokespersons for the Trump PAC.
She emphasized that she would never have signed Musk's petition and submitted her personally identifiable information if she knew she had no chance of winning the grand prize. These identifying details were later used for political data collection.
McAferty will file a class action lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiff, accusing Musk and the US Political Action Committee he founded of inducing her and other voters to provide personal information late in last year's election.
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Federal Judge Robert Pitman did not rule on McAferty's class action lawsuit, but his actions in filing the lawsuit were reasonable. This is different from the previous handling of the Philadelphia District Attorney's prosecution of Musk for "illegal lottery" activities, which was dismissed.
Musk’s representatives have previously revealed that the political action committee selects registered voters from swing states and uses these voters to serve as the committee’s public spokesperson. The selection criteria are usually based on the elector's personal experience, and the committee signs an employment contract with the successful candidate, not a "prize".
That claim resulted in an aborted “illegal lottery” lawsuit but led to new accusations of fraud. Pitman argued that plaintiff McAferty had reason to believe that Musk’s statements meant she was being offered an opportunity to participate in a random drawing, even if Musk’s subjective intention was not to be so.
Additionally, Pitman noted that political data experts can attest to how valuable voter information collected by American PACs can be to voters in swing states. He also said McAferty could file fraud and breach of contract claims against Musk.