A Wisconsin prosecutor has declined to bring election bribery charges against billionaire Elon Musk over his decision to hand out two $1 million checks during the state’s Supreme Court election campaign last year.
La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke, a Democrat, explained the decision in a letter shared Tuesday with The Hill, concluding that “nobody was paid anything of value for voting or promising to vote.”
Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, announced in March 2025 that he would appear at an event in Wisconsin and initially said admission would be limited to people who had voted in the state Supreme Court election.
In a post on his social media platform X, Musk said he would “personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.”
The post was deleted about 12 hours later and replaced with another message clarifying that entrance would be restricted to people who signed a petition opposing “activist judges.” Musk said the checks would be presented to “spokesmen” for the petition.
Musk later handed out two checks during a Wisconsin campaign rally.
Gruenke said the original announcement could be interpreted as giving voters “the possibility of winning a lottery at a town hall by voting.” However, he said it could also be viewed as offering free admission to a town hall, with the money serving as a “pre-determined payment” for individuals selected as petition spokespeople rather than compensation for voting.
“Under either view, the second post apparently recognized that potential violation and corrected it,” Gruenke wrote.
The prosecutor said he did not believe a jury would convict Musk after weighing his intent, the revised post and the fact that no one received anything valuable for casting a ballot.
“Even if I could convince a jury that the original post was still a bribe, I do not believe that a jury would convict Elon Musk of a crime,” Gruenke wrote.
His decision came approximately one month after Wisconsin’s bipartisan elections panel voted 5-1 to refer two complaints involving Musk to the Brown County district attorney’s office.
The commission, composed of three Democrats and three Republicans, found probable cause to believe the giveaways violated Wisconsin’s election bribery law. Gruenke was appointed special prosecutor because of a conflict of interest.
Wisconsin Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul also sued Musk over the giveaway. A lower court refused to block the check handouts as illegal voter bribes, leading Kaul to ask the Wisconsin Supreme Court to intervene.
Gruenke ultimately characterized the episode as a poorly phrased announcement that was subsequently corrected.
Without Musk’s “famous name” and the checks’ large values, Gruenke wrote, the controversy would amount to a “simple case of a poorly worded statement that was corrected and brought into compliance with the law.”
Musk’s legal team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Despite Musk’s involvement in the race, conservative candidate Brad Schimel lost to Democratic-backed Susan Crawford, preserving the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal majority.
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