Musk Won't Face Bribery Charges Over $1M Wisconsin Voter Checks

Elon Musk will not face criminal charges in Wisconsin over his promise to hand $1 million checks to voters during last year's state Supreme Court race, a special prosecutor announced this week. Tim Gruenke, the La Crosse County District Attorney appointed to review the matter, said a jury would not find that Musk's offer amounted to election bribery under state law.

Gruenke's decision, laid out in a letter dated Tuesday, comes more than a year after Musk pledged online that he would give $1 million to voters in the closely watched 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election. As FOX6 News Milwaukee reports, Musk initially posted that he would hold a Green Bay event open only to people who had already voted, then replaced that post less than a day later with language tying the payments to a petition against what he called activist judges. Gruenke described the original post as a “poorly worded statement” that was quickly corrected to comply with state law, according to NOTUS.

Gruenke also said in his letter that nobody was paid anything of value for voting or promising to vote, and that the corrected statement complied with the law. He was appointed special prosecutor after Brown County District Attorney David Lasee cited a conflict of interest in the case, according to the same NOTUS report.

The Green Bay Town Hall and the Checks

The payments in question were handed out at a Green Bay town hall on March 30, 2025, where Musk gave $1 million checks to two Wisconsin residents, including Nicholas Jacobs, president of the Wisconsin College Republicans. Per Votebeat, Musk wore a cheesehead hat at the rally while urging voters to back conservative judicial candidate Brad Schimel, and framed the payments as compensation for serving as spokespeople for his petition rather than as a reward for voting. Musk had said at the time, “I will also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote,” though the eligibility language was later revised to tie the money to petition advocacy.

The bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, made up of three Democrats and three Republicans, voted 5-1 in a closed session in July to refer two confidential complaints from voters in Green Bay and Milwaukee to county prosecutors, according to CBS News. The commission determined there was probable cause that Musk's offer violated the state's election bribery statute. Wisconsin's Democratic attorney general also sued in an attempt to stop Musk from handing the checks to the two voters, but state courts rejected that effort, according to FOX6's report on the case.

Why Prosecutors Passed on Charges

Under Wisconsin Statute § 12.11, offering or promising anything of value exceeding $1 to induce someone to vote is a Class I felony carrying up to three and a half years in prison and a $10,000 fine, according to the Wisconsin Legislature. Musk's attorneys had argued in 2025 that the giveaways were protected by free speech rights, and that restricting them would violate both the Wisconsin and U.S. constitutions.

Gruenke ultimately concluded that a jury would not find Musk's conduct met the bar for bribery, given the rapid correction of the original post and the absence of evidence that anyone was paid directly for casting a ballot. It is a legal defense Musk has used before. During the 2024 presidential race, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner sued to block Musk and America PAC's $1 million daily swing-state giveaway, but a Pennsylvania Common Pleas judge allowed it to continue after PAC lawyers argued the recipients were vetted spokespeople rather than random sweepstakes winners, according to Courthouse News Service. Separately, federal law under 52 U.S.C. § 10307(c) sets felony penalties of up to five years in prison for paying anyone to register or vote in elections involving federal candidates, though that statute was not the basis for the Wisconsin case.

The Most Expensive Judicial Race in the Country

The 2025 race pitted liberal Susan Crawford against conservative Brad Schimel, with total spending topping $100 million, making it the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history. Musk and affiliated groups spent at least $20 million backing Schimel, who lost to Crawford by 10 percentage points, preserving liberals' majority on the state's high court. That figure nearly doubled the previous national judicial spending record of $51.06 million, set during Wisconsin's 2023 Supreme Court race between Janet Protasiewicz and Daniel Kelly, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Protasiewicz's win in that earlier race had given liberals control of the court for the first time in 15 years.

Following Schimel's loss despite the heavy financial backing, Musk announced plans to significantly scale back his personal spending on political campaigns, according to AP News. The criminal case may be closed, but the fallout from the giveaway strategy is not entirely over. The watchdog group Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and two voters filed a civil lawsuit in Brown County Circuit Court seeking to block Musk and America PAC from conducting similar cash giveaways in future state elections, arguing the payments constitute an unlawful lottery and public nuisance, according to Truthout.