A deleted post, two $1 million checks and the prosecutor reviewing whether to charge Elon Musk

LA CROSSE — The post lived for less than 13 hours.

At 11:57 p.m. on March 27, 2025, Elon Musk wrote on X that admission to a Wisconsin talk would be limited to people who had voted in the state Supreme Court election. Then he made a promise that now sits at the center of a possible felony case.

I will also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.

Elon Musk, deleted X post, March 27, 2025

By about 12:20 p.m. the next day, the post was gone, according to the complaint Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed at the time. At 12:28 p.m., Musk posted a replacement. Admission would be limited to people who had signed his political action committee’s petition, he wrote, and the two $1 million awardees would be petition “spokesmen.”

The words had changed. Whether the first set of words had already completed a crime did not go away with them.

More than 16 months later, that question has crossed Wisconsin and landed with La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke. The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted 5-1 on July 9 to find probable cause to believe Musk violated the state’s election-bribery law. It referred the complaints to Brown County District Attorney David Lasee the next day; Lasee said the electronic complaint materials arrived July 24.

Lasee said his office had a conflict of interest he did not describe. In an Aug. 7 media release, he said a court appointed Gruenke as special prosecutor “to review this matter.”

Musk has not been charged. The commission’s finding is not a conviction, and the public referral does not require Gruenke to prosecute. It leaves Gruenke to review a referred matter, a legal theory and evidence bearing on whether the offer was intended to induce voting. He must also decide whether the state could prove that purpose beyond a reasonable doubt.

On the public record, the most straightforward theory is a Class I felony under § 12.11(1m)(a)2, based on the offer itself. Other possible charges would depend on contracts, payment records and evidence that has not been disclosed.

The prosecutor who inherited the question

Gruenke has spent his entire publicly documented prosecutorial career in La Crosse County, far from the national political machinery that Musk brought to Green Bay.

He graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School and began prosecuting here in 1995. A state prosecutors’ publication documents him as a La Crosse County prosecutor from that year and records his appointment as district attorney in July 2007; a federal opinion identifies him as an assistant district attorney by 2000. He was elected to the office in 2008 and has since won four more terms. No named opponent appears on the recovered general-election ballots or canvasses, including the county’s official election-results archive for 2008 and the 2024 results.

He is a Democrat, though most of his public record has been made in courtrooms rather than campaigns. Gruenke personally prosecuted Eric Koula and Jeffrey Lepsch in separate double-murder trials and Todd Kendhammer in the killing of his wife. A jury acquitted Erik Sackett in another homicide trial in 2019. Gruenke said afterward that the family was disappointed but that prosecutors respected the verdict.

The Wisconsin District Attorneys Association named him its 2012 State Prosecutor of the Year. He has served on the state Crime Victims Rights Board, the Law Enforcement Standards Board and the chief justice’s task force on court operations during the pandemic.

His work outside La Crosse County may matter more to the decision now before him. Research for this story located four earlier outside-county reviews. None ended with a criminal charge.

Gruenke and another special prosecutor declined to charge former Wauwatosa police officer Joseph Mensah in the fatal shooting of Jay Anderson Jr. He declined charges after reviewing an alleged $1.1 million discrepancy in Eau Claire County’s Human Services Department, finding poor financial practices but no provable crime. He declined to charge Outagamie County Judge Mark McGinnis after the judge agreed to resign.

In the fourth matter, Gruenke concluded that evidence from Ridglan Farms, a large beagle breeder near Blue Mounds, could support a felony animal-mistreatment charge. He negotiated instead. The company agreed to stop commercially selling dogs and breeding them for sale by July 1, 2026, and Gruenke agreed not to prosecute.

Those outcomes do not predict what he will do with Musk. They show the distinction he has repeatedly drawn between suspicion, probable cause and proof.

In a 2022 PBS Wisconsin interview about a different criminal statute, Gruenke described the questions he asks before charging.

I would determine if it’s a good case. I would determine if we could prove it. Would a jury convict and questions like that?

Tim Gruenke, PBS Wisconsin, July 1, 2022

In his Ridglan report, he wrote that prosecutors look beyond probable cause to whether the evidence can support a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.

Lasee offered his own assessment of the prosecutor he said had been appointed. In the release, he called Gruenke “an experienced prosecutor, who is highly competent and well-respected throughout the state.”

A copy of the appointment order was not located. Without it, the appointing judge, the order’s date, Gruenke’s precise authority and the payment arrangement remain unknown.

That missing order matters. Under Wisconsin’s appointment law, a special prosecutor generally receives the district attorney’s powers for the matter described by the court, not an open-ended commission to examine every person and offense surrounding it.

What Musk did in Wisconsin

As of Aug. 8, Forbes ranked Musk as the world’s richest person. He is the chief executive of Tesla and the founder and chief executive of SpaceX. Kaul’s 2025 complaint described him as America PAC’s founder and principal funder. The Federal Election Commission lists America PAC as an independent-expenditure committee, and the Associated Press reported that Musk was its main contributor as it supported Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

Musk-backed groups spent more than $21 million trying to elect conservative candidate Brad Schimel. A Schimel victory would have ended the court’s liberal majority. He lost to liberal candidate Susan Crawford by 10 percentage points.

The offers and publicly announced awards unfolded in stages.

On March 20, 2025, America PAC offered Wisconsin registered voters $100 to sign a petition opposing “activist judges” and another $100 for each Wisconsin registered voter they referred who also signed. Six days later, Musk announced the first $1 million award. America PAC later identified Green Bay resident Scott Ainsworth as the first awardee and called him a petition spokesperson.

Then came Musk’s late-night post tying event admission to people who had voted and promising two more checks in appreciation for voting. The replacement post tied admission to petition signing and described the two awardees as petition spokesmen.

At a Green Bay event on March 30, Musk presented oversized $1 million checks to Nicholas Jacobs and Ekaterina Diestler. Those two and Ainsworth are the three people America PAC publicly identified as $1 million awardees. Public posts and event coverage establish the announcements and the stage presentations. No public bank record, cleared check or executed spokesperson agreement reviewed for this story establishes when the money moved, who supplied it or exactly what each awardee promised to do.

According to a contemporaneous report and a later civil filing, America PAC posted a video the day after the event in which Diestler said she had signed the petition, referred friends and family, voted “and now I have a million dollars.” The PAC deleted that video and posted a replacement the next day that removed “vote” from the sequence. The deletion is evidence a prosecutor could examine. By itself, it does not establish why Musk offered the money.

The most detailed Musk-side account located is a March 30, 2025, court filing. His lawyers said America PAC had paid one petition signer who agreed to serve as a paid spokesperson and planned two additional spokesperson agreements. They said the petition and agreements sought to build a grassroots movement against “activist judges,” not expressly support or oppose a candidate.

That filing came before the Elections Commission’s investigation. No public statement from Musk, America PAC or those lawyers responding specifically to the commission’s 2026 finding or Gruenke’s appointment was located by the Aug. 8 reporting cutoff. The Associated Press reported in July that Musk spokespeople did not immediately answer its requests for comment.

The charge the commission named

The public referral identifies one alleged felony violation: Wis. Stat. § 12.11(1m)(a)2.

In plain English, the law prohibits offering, giving, lending or promising money or another covered benefit to an elector, or to another person, for the purpose of inducing an elector to vote or refrain from voting. It separately covers offering or providing the benefit on account of someone having voted or refrained.

Offers, gives, lends or promises to give or lend … anything of value … in order to induce any elector to … Vote or refrain from voting.

Wis. Stat. § 12.11(1m)(a)2

A prosecution under the forward-looking branch would have to prove four propositions beyond a reasonable doubt: Musk made an offer or promise; the offer involved money or another benefit covered by the statute; the benefit was to or for an elector or another person; and Musk’s purpose was to induce an elector to vote.

Under the backward-looking branch, the final proposition changes. The state would have to prove that the benefit was offered or provided because an elector had voted.

Two features of the statutory text make the March 27 post legally important.

First, the law criminalizes the offer and the promise, not only a completed payment. For an offer-based charge, Gruenke would not need a cleared $1 million check or a voter who says the post changed a decision. He would need evidence that Musk communicated a covered offer with the required voting purpose.

Second, this subsection does not require an offer to favor a particular candidate. The next clause in the statute separately addresses inducing a vote for or against a particular person. Gruenke would not have to prove that Musk demanded a vote for Schimel if he charged the vote-or-refrain offense named by the commission.

The Elections Commission’s July 10 referral says the March 27 social-media post offered $1 million to people who voted for the purpose of inducing them to vote. That is an administrative probable-cause finding. A criminal complaint would still have to persuade a judge that a felony probably occurred, and a conviction would require proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

A violation is a Class I felony under Wis. Stat. § 12.60. The maximum penalty is three and a half years in prison, a $10,000 fine, or both. If a court imposed a bifurcated prison sentence at the maximum, state law permits no more than 18 months of confinement followed by two years of extended supervision. Those are statutory ceilings, not a forecast of what any sentence would be.

One public theory, several investigative paths

On what is public now, the simplest criminal complaint would rest on one felony theory against Musk: the March 27 offer under the vote-or-refrain clause. The record does not support a responsible prediction that Gruenke will bring two counts because two checks were promised, three counts because three awardees were identified or a separate count for every person who saw the post.

No reported Wisconsin decision located for this story under this exact subsection defines the proper unit of prosecution. Before filing more than one count, a prosecutor would need to decide whether the law treats one public message as one offense, each promised benefit as a separate offense or each elector reached as a separate offense. The public materials do not answer that question.

Other theories exist in Wisconsin law, but the public record does not establish their elements. The unlocated appointment order also leaves unclear whether Gruenke could pursue offenses beyond the WEC referral.

Before an additional Chapter 12 charge, the state would also need an Elections Commission probable-cause determination covering the alleged violation. The public finding disclosed by the commission addresses the March 27 post under the vote-or-refrain clause.

Gruenke could examine whether the March 30 presentations support separate allegations that Musk gave money on account of completed voting. That would require more than photographs of oversized checks. Contracts, payment records, awardee testimony, voting status and the actual selection rules would bear on what was given and why.

He could examine the neighboring clause that prohibits offering or providing a benefit to induce a vote for or against a particular candidate. Musk’s support for Schimel, Ainsworth’s public appeal to vote for him and America PAC’s anti-Crawford messaging supply context. The challenged post did not condition a benefit on a Schimel vote. Internal communications or selection terms could help establish that more specific purpose.

Section 12.11(1m)(c) targets financing: advancing or paying money to another person with the intent that it be used in election bribery. A charge on that theory would require records tying Musk or another funder to money supplied for the allegedly unlawful offer; the public stage presentation alone does not establish that.

A conspiracy charge under Wis. Stat. § 939.31 would require proof that Musk intended election bribery to occur, agreed or combined with another person for that purpose and that someone committed an act toward it. The public record shows that Musk and America PAC worked together. It does not disclose a criminal agreement. Their messages, contracts and payment records would be central. Wisconsin’s party-to-a-crime statute could make Musk legally responsible for another actor’s conduct if intentional assistance, procurement or conspiracy were proved, but it is a liability theory rather than a separate offense.

In a separate civil case, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, Paul Gagliardi and Deborah Patel have accused Musk, America PAC and United States of America Inc. of election bribery, financing bribery, an unauthorized lottery, civil conspiracy and public nuisance. Those are allegations in a pending lawsuit, not findings and not Gruenke’s charging plan. A lottery charge under § 945.02(3), a Class B misdemeanor, would require proof of an enterprise in which consideration gave participants an opportunity to win a prize awarded by chance. Under the statute, consideration means a commercial or financial advantage to the promoter or a disadvantage to a participant. The claimed spokesperson agreements could bear on whether the selections were made by chance, but the public record does not disclose the selection rules.

The election-bribery statute separately prohibits soliciting or accepting a covered benefit for voting or refraining from voting. That provision does not create a direct Musk charge. The complaints the commission referred name Musk, not the awardees, and no awardee had been charged by the Aug. 8 reporting cutoff.

The word at the center: purpose

There is no dispute about the words. The dispute is whether Musk used them with the purpose the statute forbids.

For the state, the strongest evidence is the March 27 language itself. Event admission was limited to those who had voted. The checks were promised in appreciation for voting. America PAC’s surrounding $100 petition program targeted Wisconsin registered voters, expired with the election and sat inside a campaign that repeatedly urged turnout. Prosecutors could cite the deletions and revisions as circumstantial evidence of intent; the defense could characterize them as corrections of a mistaken post. The public record does not establish why the language changed.

None of that automatically proves criminal intent.

The defense would ask a jury to look at what happened after the post: the revised terms required petition signing, not proof of voting; Musk handed checks to people described as spokespeople; and his lawyers said one signer had agreed to be a paid spokesperson while the PAC planned two more agreements. A badly phrased post, they could argue, is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt that voting was the price of the benefit.

The First Amendment gives both sides an argument.

In Brown v. Hartlage, the U.S. Supreme Court protected a candidate’s promise to reduce his public salary because it was a policy promise to voters, not a private payoff. The same decision recognized a state’s authority to prohibit exchanges of private benefit for electoral support.

A State may surely prohibit a candidate from buying votes.

U.S. Supreme Court, Brown v. Hartlage, 1982

In Meyer v. Grant, the court protected paying petition circulators because circulation is political speech. Musk could invoke Meyer by arguing that a genuine spokesperson contract pays for advocacy. The decision does not establish what these checks purchased.

No published Wisconsin appellate decision located for this story answers how the vote-or-refrain clause applies when a payment may have both an advocacy purpose and a turnout purpose. Nor does one say whether inducing voting must be the sole purpose, the primary purpose or simply one purpose among several. No pattern criminal jury instruction exists for § 12.11. If Gruenke charges, a trial judge may have to build the instruction from the statute and broader criminal law.

What Wisconsin’s courts did not decide

Wisconsin’s courts encountered this dispute in 2025, but only as an emergency and never on the merits.

Kaul sued on March 28 to stop the Green Bay payments. A circuit judge refused emergency relief without deciding whether the offer was lawful. The state then sought a supervisory writ in the Court of Appeals and asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to take an original action. Both efforts failed. The Supreme Court denied the petition and treated the injunction request as moot without saying whether Musk violated § 12.11.

The state failed to stop the event. The courts never ruled the program lawful or criminal.

Wisconsin has prosecuted election bribery before. In State v. Huff, a Milwaukee jury convicted Garrett Huff of three conspiracy counts after evidence showed $5 payments connected to an election party and trips to the polls during a 2007 recall election. The Court of Appeals affirmed in 2009.

Huff involved the neighboring clause about inducing electors to go to the polls, not the vote-or-refrain clause named in Musk’s referral. No publicly reported prosecution under the exact subsection was located. Because Wisconsin’s historic circuit-court charging records are not comprehensively searchable by statute, that is not proof that a Musk case would be the first.

What happens now

An appointed prosecutor reviewing the matter may use ordinary criminal-investigation tools, seek records and work with law enforcement. Wisconsin’s John Doe statute uses a limited list of eligible offenses, and election bribery is not on it. Calling this a John Doe investigation would be wrong unless a separately qualifying crime emerged.

The referral letter cites a statute requiring a report to the Elections Commission within 40 days of the referral. The commission sent the July 10 letter by email and wrote that it “hereby refers” both complaints. That makes Aug. 19 the 40th day under Wisconsin’s time-counting rule. Lasee’s office received the electronic complaint materials July 24, but the statute does not restart the clock when those materials arrive. The law calls for another report every 30 days while a matter remains unresolved. It does not make the first report a charge-or-decline deadline, and it does not say that Gruenke loses power if a report is late.

Musk’s Texas residence would not by itself prevent a Wisconsin case. Under Wisconsin’s territorial-jurisdiction law, the state reaches some out-of-state acts intended to cause a prohibited result in Wisconsin. A prosecution would still have to establish Wisconsin territorial jurisdiction and Brown County venue; neither the referral nor Gruenke’s appointment proves those facts.

The commission found probable cause. Gruenke’s decision calls for a different judgment: Can the state prove the case to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt?

The post was gone by early afternoon on March 28. Gruenke now has to decide what, under Wisconsin law, its 22-word promise amounted to.