How Elon Musk secretly tried to oust a Texas prosecutor

A group called Saving Austin, funded primarily by the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, sent out fliers and text messages and spent more than $650,000 on television ads attacking District Attorney Jose Garza in the Democratic primary, according to people familiar with Musk's involvement, as well as filings with the Federal Communications Commission and company documents.

Musk, who has a net worth of more than $200 billion and owns a major social network, has used his influence and money to help Donald Trump return to the White House. His support for Trump marks a political shift that could have a significant impact on the presidential campaign. His undercover involvement in the Texas district attorney election shows that his political involvement is more extensive than previously known.

It was also a provocation. One of the flyers sent to voters in February featured Garza's photo above a picture of a crumpled teddy bear that appeared to be stained with blood.

“José Garza is filling Austin's streets with pedophiles and murderers,” the flyer said. “The next victim could be your loved one.”

On the back of the flyer was a photo of a man's hand covering a child's mouth.

Left-leaning Austin is the state capital and county seat of Travis County, where Musk has established something of a home base after years in California.

Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

Musk worked with Republican advisers this spring to create a political action committee to lure voters to the polls to support Trump, the Republican presidential nominee. Musk publicly endorsed the former president in July after Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally. Last month, he interviewed Trump on Musk's social media page, X.

In both campaigns, he channeled his money through outside groups rather than giving it directly to the candidates. Musk has portrayed Soros-backed prosecutors and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump's opponent in the presidential race, as a threat to society.

America PAC, Musk's pro-Trump project, is registered with the Federal Election Commission and must disclose its donors. The Texas initiative was set up as a tax-exempt “charity” that does not have to disclose its donors and involved Republican advisers, lawyers and former staffers of Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), according to FCC corporate filings seen by The Wall Street Journal.

Neither Garza nor his opponent Jeremy Sylestine said they knew about Musk's involvement in the race until the Journal contacted them.

Both condemned the “Saving Austin” flyer article as inadmissible after it was distributed. Some voters also balked at it, writing on social media that the flyer motivated them to vote to support Garza.

Garza won a clear victory with 67% of the votes cast and is considered the clear favorite for the parliamentary elections in November.

“The country should take notice,” Garza said in an emailed statement. “MAGA billionaires treat Texas like a petri dish for extremist political goals and then export their anti-public safety, anti-job, anti-freedom agenda to all fifty states. We have shown that these extremists can be defeated.”

Musk vs Soros

In his previous campaign for district attorney in 2020, Garza finished first among three candidates in the Democratic primary and won the party's runoff with 68% of the vote amid nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

Musk has privately expressed an interest in countering Soros' influence. According to one person who has spoken to the billionaire about the issue, Musk has compared Soros to a supervillain.

Soros, who made his fortune as a hedge fund manager, has donated millions of dollars over the past decade to PACs supporting candidates for district attorney, turning what were often dull, low-paying elections into closely watched elections. Soros favored candidates who campaigned on platforms they said would make the justice system fairer, including a focus on police accountability rather than traditional, tough-on-crime policies.

His efforts began amid bipartisan calls to reduce the U.S. prison population and after a grand jury in 2014 declined to indict the police officer who shot and killed unarmed black man Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, a case that sparked a national debate about race, justice and policing.

The Soros-funded Texas Justice and Public Safety PAC spent about $450,000 supporting Garza when he ran for district attorney in 2020, according to state campaign finance disclosures. Soros did not donate anything to this year's Travis County campaign.

A representative for Soros declined to comment.

Since the pandemic began, crime rates in Austin have declined. Overall, crimes reported in Austin in the first half of 2024 were the lowest in five years, although the number of murders was still higher than before the pandemic, according to police data. Musk announced in 2021 that he would move Tesla's headquarters to the city. Garza took office that same year.

According to a campaign spokeswoman, Garza has neither met nor spoken with Musk, but the billionaire has been scathing about Soros and the prosecutors he supports.

“In my opinion, he basically hates humanity,” Musk said of Soros in an appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast in 2023. “He does things that undermine the fabric of civilization – he elects prosecutors who refuse to prosecute crimes.”

In Travis County, Republicans and moderate Democrats saw an opportunity for someone like Sylestine to challenge Garza. Sylestine, who worked as a Travis County prosecutor for 15 years before setting out to practice law, campaigned on a commitment to repairing the office's relationship with police and prioritizing victims.

He declined to comment for this article.

Sylestine has spent nearly $1 million more than Garza with help from Republicans, including donations from Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir Technologies and a longtime Musk ally. Lonsdale, who has been an unofficial political adviser to Musk and is active in the pro-Trump PAC, donated $25,000 to Sylestine's campaign in early February, campaign finance filings show.

Musk did not donate directly to Sylestine's campaign, but he made no secret of his desire to oust Garza. On primary day, Musk urged Tesla employees near the automaker's headquarters in Austin to dump Garza and vote for a district attorney “who actually prosecutes crimes.” He repeated that sentiment in a now-deleted post on X.

Musk hired Republican political consulting firm Axiom Strategies to help him anonymously invest his money in the election campaign, people familiar with the matter said.

The leaflet that voters received in February, accusing Garza of bringing pedophiles and murderers to the streets, caused an uproar in Austin and was quickly condemned by the candidates.

“I want to make it clear that I and my campaign team condemn the demagogic emails from the so-called Saving Austin PAC attacking Jose Garza,” Sylestine said in a post on X in February. “This extreme rhetoric and imagery should have no place in this campaign.”

Cease and desist declaration

Garza's campaign has since sent a cease-and-desist letter to Saving Austin, saying the group should have registered with the Texas Ethics Commission and included a disclaimer in its materials stating that it was political advertising. The letter claims Saving Austin “appears to be a sham organization that operates with dark money and was created to conceal the true identity of those spending money to influence elections in Travis County.”

Saving Austin is an assumed name for an organization called Saving Texas, according to Texas corporate records. The Gober Group, a political law firm, founded the organization in 2016 under a different name, Conservative Action Network. The group changed its name to Saving Texas in 2023 and adopted the alias Saving Austin in early 2024, corporate records show.

Chris Gober, the founder of the law firm that created the organization, is treasurer of Musk's pro-Trump PAC, according to FEC filings. The three Saving Texas directors listed in the company's most recent filing are former employees of Cruz, who is a client of Axiom and Gober's firm.

In recent weeks, Saving Texas has begun running attack ads again after months of inactivity, FCC records show. This time, the target is Democratic Rep. Colin Allred, a civil rights attorney and former professional football player who is running against Cruz for a U.S. Senate seat in the November election.

Write to Joe Palazzolo at [email protected] and Dana Mattioli at [email protected]