Elon Musk secretly funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into an effort to turf a Democratic prosecutor in Texas, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
The Texas resident and Tesla and SpaceX CEO was the chief financier of Saving Austin, a group that distributed incendiary material attacking District Attorney José Garza during the Democratic primary, including fliers that baselessly accused him of “filling Austin’s streets with pedophiles & killers,” the Journal reports. Alongside that tagline, the fliers contained an image of the Travis County DA next to a bloody teddy bear and the warning, “The next victim could be your loved one.”
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Musk’s participation may have been more personal than political due to one key factor: his reported hatred of investor and philanthropist George Soros, a supporter of the DA.
The progressive Soros, 94, has donated millions to political action committees in support of district attorney candidates who advocated for reforms to the justice system and greater accountability for law enforcement. That includes Garza’s 2020 campaign, when the Soros-backed Texas Justice and Public Safety PAC spent $450,000. Soros did not contribute to this year’s race.
Garza and his opponent in the Democratic primary, Jeremy Sylestine, told the Journal they didn’t know about Musk’s involvement, and both previously condemned the Saving Austin flier. Garza won the March primary with two-thirds of the vote and is expected to win re-election in November.
Records reviewed by the Journal said Saving Austin, which spent more than $650,000 on television ads attacking Garza, took money from Republican consultants and former employees of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
Musk, the Journal reported, has privately compared Soros to a supervillain. He’s also done it in public, tweeting that the Hungarian-American businessman reminds him of the X-Men’s greatest foe, Magneto (Magneto, like Soros, is a Holocaust survivor, and Musk’s comments received a rebuke from Jewish groups.)
“In my opinion, he fundamentally hates humanity,” Musk said of Soros last year, on Joe Rogan’s podcast. “He’s doing things that erode the fabric of civilization—getting DAs elected that refuse to prosecute crime.”
Soros is also a longtime fixation of far-right conspiracists whose fascinations Musk has openly flirted with, including racist theories about the erosion of white culture by immigrants.
The Journal suggests Musk, the world’s richest man with a net worth of more than $200 billion, may have been more politically active than he let on before he promised to spend millions to elect former President Donald Trump in July.
Unlike Musk’s Trump-supporting America PAC—which had to register with the Federal Election Commission and publish its donors—the Texas campaign was mounted by using a tax-exempt organization type that can keep donor names secret.
