Philadelphia
CNN
—
Tech billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk is trying to move a lawsuit over his $1 million giveaway to voters into federal court, potentially averting a hearing Thursday in Philadelphia state court that he was required to attend.
Lawyers for the Tesla CEO filed a “motion of removal” in federal court late Wednesday night. This typically pauses the state case and puts the matter in the hands of a federal judge – unless and until that judge decides to send the case back to state courts.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who filed the original lawsuit against Musk, will have an opportunity to argue that the case should be sent back to Pennsylvania court. But this legal maneuver by Musk very likely staves off the hearing that was scheduled for Thursday in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, at least for now.
At the center of the legal battle is a daily $1 million sweepstakes that Musk’s pro-Trump super PAC, called America PAC, is offering to registered voters in battleground states.
“The Complaint, in truth, has little to do with state-law claims of nuisance and consumer protection,” Musk’s lawyers wrote in their new federal filings. “Rather, although disguised as state law claims, the Complaint’s focus is to prevent Defendants’ purported ‘interference’ with the forthcoming Federal Presidential Election by any means.”
Further, Musk’s lawyers claim the issues in Krasner’s lawsuit “raise significant questions of federal law that are within the exclusive province” of the federal court system.
A spokesman for Krasner’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday morning about the status of the scheduled court hearing in Philadelphia.
In Krasner’s lawsuit, he offered a prebuttal to Musk’s argument, saying, “this is not a case about whether Defendants have violated state or federal laws prohibiting vote-buying” and argued that this is a state matter because Musk was “indisputably violating Pennsylvania’s statutory prohibitions against illegal lotteries and deceiving consumers.”
This is the first time Musk’s legal team has responded to the allegations he is running a potentially illegal lottery and improperly influencing the 2024 election. Lawyers for the super PAC said in the filing that all of its spending on the presidential race is “legally protected expenditures and political speech.”
