In this morning’s Supreme Court arguments, where the justices are mulling a campaign finance case about how much money a political party’s committee can spend in coordination with a political candidate, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested, without using his name, that Elon Musk’s 2024 donation to Donald Trump’s fundraising apparatus was quid pro quo for government influence.
“You mean to suggest the fact that one major donor to the current president, the most major donor to the current president, got a very lucrative job immediately upon election, from the new administration, does that not give the appearance with quid-pro-quo,” Sotomayor said.
“If I think I know what you’re talking about, I have a hard time thinking that his salary that he drew from the federal government was an effective quid pro quo bribery,” Noel Francisco, arguing on behalf of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, responded to Sotomayor.
“Maybe not the salary, but certainly the lucrative government contracts might be,” Sotomayor posited.