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Elon Musk was reportedly giving tens of millions of dollars to conservative political causes years before he made headlines this summer for creating a pro-Trump political action committee.
Beginning in 2022, the X billionaire funneled an estimated $60m to groups affiliated with former Trump adviser Stephen Miller and 2024 candidate and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter.
The Independent has contacted Musk, DeSantis, and Miller’s legal advocacy group for comment.
The donations came from a Musk-affiliated limited-liability company. They were sent to so-called “dark money” 501(c)(4) political groups, which don’t have to disclose their donors and can raise unlimited amounts of money from people and companies, per the paper.
In the fall of 2022, $50m in Musk cash supported an ad campaign from a group called Citizens for Sanity, which ran spots in battleground states criticizing Democrats for their purported stances on transgender children and illegal immigration.
The group, incorporated in Delaware in June of that year, counted multiple salaried employees from Miller’s America First Legal group as its officers, according to The Journal.
During the Trump administration, Miller was a key voice behind hardline immigration policies like family separation, the border wall, and the Muslim-majority country travel ban.
Musk frequently rails against immigration on his X page and has publically feuded with his estranged daughter Vivian Wilson, who is trans.
The following year, another $10m went through a series of groups in support of DeSantis.
The alleged DeSantis donation, which came after a reported 2023 meeting at a fundraiser, comes as less of a surprise.
In 2023, DeSantis launched his presidential campaign via an event hosted on X with Musk, a year after the billionaire claimed on social media it was “time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”
Still, by the time 2024 rolled around, Musks became a vocal Trump supporter, founding America PAC, a group that’s reportedly spent more than $60m on the 2024 election cycle, most in support of Donald Trump.
The former president hasn’t been shy about the endorsement either, frequently praising Musk on the campaign trail and claiming he’d tap Musk to run a government task force to drastically cut spending.
