There’s deeply cynical and then there’s things which might be illegal. In the first category we have an Elon Musk-funded PAC microtargeting Jewish and Arab communities with diametrically opposed ads about Kamala Harris’s support for Israel or Palestine. Amazingly cynical. But then you have what I’m going to describe next which comes from another Musk-funded dark money operation. They have set up fake sites impersonating the Harris campaign using fake policy positions and then sending out text messages also impersonating the campaign which aim to drive voters to the fake site. (A lot of potential legal and regulatory questions turns on word like “fake” and “impersonating”, which we’ll return to in a moment.)
I found out about this from this article by Anna Massoglia at OpenSecrets. As far as I can tell she’s the first to report it. The project is the work of Building America’s Future PAC, which seems to be largely and perhaps now entirely funded by Elon Musk. It’s part of a network of Musk-funded PACs which are run and/or organized by a group of operatives who ran Ron DeSantis’s failed presidential campaign. America PAC is another of these entities organized with the same money and by the same operatives. That’s the one doing the canvassing and get out the vote operations.
As Massoglia reports, in late September Building America’s Future set up a site called Progress 2028 which purports to be Kamala Harris’s response or counter to Project 2025. The site is designed to have the general appearance of a Harris site in the sense of being in favor of gun regulation, supportive of gender-affirming care, etc. but with wildly over-the-top versions of those policies. So for instance, it calls for minor children to be able to get sex change operations at school without the knowledge of or interference from parents, calls for a mandatory gun buy-back program etc.
The PAC also funded a text message campaign which pushes the same fake policy messages impersonating Harris’s campaign and drives recipients of the texts to the site.
Courtesy of TPM Reader DM here’s what one of those texts looks ike.
Now let’s get back to “impersonating”.
The texts and the site are clearly meant to make you think that these come from the Harris campaign or perhaps one of its associated committees. They refer to “our” plan, etc. There’s no question this is the intent and likely effect. The limited disclaimers say they are paid for by Progress2028. But campaign’s often have sites with separate names or even separate funding vehicles. It would be totally normal for the Harris campaign or one of its associated committees to have set up a site with such a name. Legally speaking, however, it is funded by “Progress2028”. That’s a fictitious name created by Building America’s Future in late September in Virginia. The same intentionally misleading but not technically inaccurate labeling is followed on the website, the texts and also online ads, which Massoglia references. To get really specific it was registered by a DC based lawyer named James E. Tyrrell III, whose law firm bio page you can see here.
If these said “paid for by Harris for President” you’d have a straight up campaign finance violation. But that’s not what they’re doing. So I don’t think the Musk group is doing anything illegal here.
The one part of this I’m not sure about, however, is the texts. Texts, like the US mail and phone calls, come under specific regulatory and even legal frameworks. In some cases, it’s not enough to be technically accurate in the way I’m describing above. If you’re trying to impersonate someone that can be enough to get you in trouble. That’s very different from a website in which you can say basically anything.
If you’ve gotten these texts please let me know. Also if you’re more versed than I am on the regulatory regime for text messaging drop me a line as well.
