Elon Musk was the sole funder of a super PAC formed in the final weeks of the election that spent millions on ads claiming Donald Trump’s position on abortion was aligned with that of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Musk invested $20.5 million in the group on Oct. 24, according to a campaign finance document filed with the Federal Election Commission late Thursday. The timing of the donation meant that Musk’s support did not have to be revealed until after the election.
The group, called RBG PAC, spent almost all of that money on advertising. Their ads claimed that Ginsburg, the liberal justice and staunch supporter of women’s rights who died in 2020, was “of the same mind” with Trump on the issue of abortion. Their website featured photos of Trump and Ginsburg with the caption “great minds think alike.”
The justices largely avoid speaking publicly about presidential politics, but Ginsburg’s dying wish in 2020 was that Trump not replace her on the court, her granddaughter said. Trump replaced her with Amy Coney Barrett shortly before the 2020 election; Barrett was in the judicial majority that voted to overturn Roe v. Wade two years later.
The avalanche of publicity came in the final weeks of the election, after Democrats spent months (years) attacking Trump on the abortion issue after the court led by judges he appointed overturned Roeprompting more than a dozen states to ban the procedure.
Musk became a major political donor to Republican causes this year, and his involvement in the RBG PAC represented just a fraction of his overall political investments. The world’s richest man, who is set to advise Trump under the banner of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, invested at least $118 million in his own super PAC, America PAC, in mid-October. That super PAC had not yet filed its post-general FEC report, which is due at midnight, and may reveal more donations from Musk.
In late October, Musk also donated $3 million to a super PAC linked to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and $924,600 to Trump’s 47 Committee, his first direct donation to Trump’s operation. That joint fundraising committee sends money to the Trump campaign, as well as the Republican National Committee and other Republican groups.
This year, Musk also previously donated $1 million to the GOP-linked super PAC Early Vote Action and several hundred thousand dollars to a joint fundraising committee affiliated with Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.).