Musk Is a No-Show at Hearing on $1M-a-Day Offer

A Pennsylvania prosecutor's effort to shut down Elon Musk's $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes moved to federal court on Thursday after a state judge let both sides debate their grievances in a hearing skipped by the world's richest man. The move to federal court allows Musk to continue the giveaway because the case probably won't be heard until after the election, reports Reuters.

• Judge Angelo Foglietta agreed that Musk, as a named defendant in the lawsuit filed by District Attorney Larry Krasner, should have attended the hearing in person, but he declined to immediately sanction the tech mogul, the AP reports.
• Musk's lawyer, Matthew Haverstick, said his client is an extremely busy man who could not simply "materialize" in the courtroom hours after the hearing was scheduled. Krasner's team challenged the notion that the founder of SpaceX could not make it to Philadelphia, prompting a quick retort from the judge. "Counsel, he's not going to get in a rocket ship and land on the building," Foglietta replied.

• The huge giveaways to registered voters come from Musk's political organization, which aims to boost Donald Trump's presidential campaign. After Musk's lawyers argued that claims of federal election interference are involved, Foglietta put the state case on hold pending a decision in federal court, where the case was assigned to US District Judge Gerald J. Pappert, a Republican former Pennsylvania attorney general appointed to the federal bench by Barack Obama. No hearings there were immediately scheduled.
• Krasner, a Democrat, wants the case decided in state court in Democrat-led Philadelphia, where his lawsuit filed Monday accused Musk and his PAC of running a dubious lottery in the tense run-up to Tuesday's election. Krasner's lawyers noted that four of the first dozen winners appeared to be from Pennsylvania, perhaps the key prize in the tight presidential race between Trump and Kamala Harris.

• Musk's lawyers had argued that the case didn't belong in state court and that the DA was engaging in "thinly veiled electioneering," the Guardian reports. "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," they wrote.
• Krasner's lawyers noted that Musk and the America PAC had "brazenly" continued the lottery every day this week, including Thursday morning, despite Krasner's legal bid to shut it down. The sweepstakes is set to run through Election Day, open to people in too-close-to-call states who can show that they're registered to vote and signed a petition supporting the Constitution. Election law experts have raised questions about whether the offer violates federal law barring someone from paying others to vote.

(More Elon Musk stories.)