Billionaire Elon Musk has poured more than $20 million into a mysterious super PAC at the end of the 2024 campaign, part of the more than $250 million he has spent in total to boost President-elect Donald Trump, according to reports. new campaign finance reports show.
Musk funded RBG PAC, according to the report the group filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday evening. The super PAC, which did not disclose its donors before the election, launched ads claiming Trump did not support a federal abortion ban.
All the money the group raised – $20.5 million – came from a single donation from the Elon Musk Revocable Trust in Austin, Texas. RBG PAC spent nearly all of its money on digital ads, mailers and text messages, according to the campaign finance report, which covered Oct. 17 through Nov. 25.
The group’s website says Trump and the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg agree on the abortion issue, drawing criticism from Ginsburg’s granddaughter Clara Spara, who told The New York Times the message was “downright awful.”
Trump took credit for the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, a decision that came after three Trump-appointed justices voted with the majority to overturn the nation’s right to abortion. (One of those justices, Amy Coney Barrett, was appointed to replace Ginsburg weeks before the 2020 election, after Ginsburg died in mid-September.) As president, he supported a federal ban on abortion after 20 weeks.
But during this campaign, Trump backed away from that position and instead declared that he supported states’ right to decide abortion laws. Democrats have continued to crack down on Trump over his past positions, arguing that if elected, he and a Republican Congress would restrict abortion nationwide.
RBG PAC’s late ad blitz is just a small part of Musk’s total election spending this year: He also bankrolled America PAC, a super PAC that reported spending $157 million backing Trump in the presidential race.
America PAC’s latest campaign finance report shows Musk donated $238 million to the company during the election cycle, including $120 million in the final weeks of the race alone.
Federal disclosures show that the US PAC spent heavily on canvassing, text message-based get-out-the-vote efforts, printing and postage (most likely for direct mail), as well as on digital advertising. A controversial cash giveaway was also held where $1 million was given out each day to someone who signed the group’s conservative-leaning petition.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner sued Musk and America PAC in late October in an attempt to stop the giveaway, but a state judge disagreed to halt the program. The Justice Department also warned the PAC around the same time that the giveaway could be illegal, but took no public action against it.
