How Elon Musk secretly tried to oust a Texas prosecutor

A group primarily funded by the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive, which called itself Saving Austin, sent out fliers and texts and spent more than $650,000 on television ads attacking District Attorney José Garza in the Democratic primary race earlier this year, according to people familiar with Musk’s involvement, as well as Federal Communications Commission filings and corporate documents.

Musk, who is worth more than $200 billion and is the owner of a major social-media 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 major ramifications in the presidential race. His covert effort in the local prosecutor’s race in Texas shows that his engagement in politics is broader than previously known.

It was also provocative. One of the fliers sent to voters in February bore Garza’s photo above an image of a rumpled teddy bear, stained with what appeared to be blood.

“José Garza is filling Austin’s streets with pedophiles & killers," the flier said. “The next victim could be your loved one."

On the back of the flier was a photo of a man’s hand covering a child’s mouth.

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

Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Musk this spring worked with Republican consultants to create a super political-action committee intended to draw voters to the polls in support of 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 site, X.

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

America PAC, Musk’s pro-Trump project, is registered with the Federal Election Commission and must disclose its donors. The Texas effort flowed from a tax-exempt “social welfare" organization that doesn’t have to reveal donors, and included Republican consultants, lawyers and former staff members of Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), according to FCC and corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Neither Garza nor his opponent, Jeremy Sylestine, said they were aware of Musk’s involvement in the race until the Journal contacted them.

Both of them condemned the Saving Austin flier as out of bounds after it was sent. Some voters also recoiled from it, saying on social media that the flier had motivated them to get to the polls to support Garza.

Garza cruised to victory with 67% of the vote and is heavily favored to win the general election in November.

“The country should take note," Garza said in an emailed statement. “MAGA billionaires treat Texas like a petri dish for extremist policy aims, then export their anti-public safety, job-killing, anti-freedom agenda to all fifty states. We’ve shown that these extremists can be beaten."

Musk vs. Soros

In his earlier campaign for district attorney in 2020, Garza finished first out of three candidates in the Democratic primary. He went on to win the party’s runoff election with 68% of the vote, in the midst of nationwide protests over George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minneapolis.

Musk has privately expressed interest in countering the sway of Soros, whom Musk has compared to a supervillain, according to a person who has spoken with the billionaire on the issue.

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

His effort began in earnest in the midst of bipartisan calls for reducing the U.S. prison population and after a grand jury in 2014 declined to indict the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed Black man, in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo. That case fomented a national conversation on race, justice and policing.

The Texas Justice and Public Safety PAC, funded by Soros, spent about $450,000 in support of Garza as he campaigned for district attorney in 2020, according to state campaign-finance disclosures. Soros didn’t contribute to this year’s race in Travis County.

A representative for Soros declined to comment.

Austin has seen its crime rates decrease since a pandemic surge. Overall, crimes reported in Austin in the first half of 2024 were the lowest in five years, though homicides remained higher than in prepandemic times, according to police data. Musk announced in 2021 that he was moving Tesla’s headquarters to the city. That was the same year Garza assumed office.

Garza has never met or spoken with Musk, according to a campaign spokeswoman, but the billionaire has been scathing about Soros and the district attorneys he supported.

“In my opinion, he fundamentally hates humanity," Musk said of Soros in a 2023 appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. “He’s doing things that erode the fabric of civilization—getting DAs elected that refuse to prosecute crime."

In Travis County, Republicans and moderate Democrats saw a potential opening for someone like Sylestine to challenge Garza. Sylestine, who worked as a prosecutor in Travis County for 15 years before entering private practice, campaigned on restoring the office’s relationship with police and giving priority to victims.

He declined to comment for this article.

Sylestine outspent Garza by nearly $1 million with help from contributions from Republicans, including Palantir Technologies’ co-founder Joe Lonsdale, a longtime Musk ally. Lonsdale, who has acted as an informal political adviser to Musk and is involved in the pro-Trump PAC, gave $25,000 to Sylestine’s campaign in early February, according to campaign-finance records.

Musk didn’t give to Sylestine’s campaign directly, but he made no secret of his desire to oust Garza. On the day of the primary, Musk urged Tesla employees based near the carmaker’s headquarters in Austin to ditch Garza and vote for a district attorney “who will actually prosecute crime." He echoed the sentiment in a since-deleted post on X.

Musk engaged the Republican political consulting firm Axiom Strategies to help him insert his money into the race anonymously, said the people familiar with the effort.

The flier that voters began receiving in February, which accused Garza of putting pedophiles and killers on the streets, created a stir in Austin and was quickly condemned by the candidates.

“I want to make it unequivocally clear that I, and my campaign, denounce the demagogic mailer by the so-called Saving Austin PAC attacking José Garza," Sylestine said in a February post on X. “That extreme rhetoric and imagery should have no place in this race."

Cease and desist

Garza’s campaign, meanwhile, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Saving Austin, saying that the group should have registered with the Texas Ethics Commission and included a disclaimer on its materials that they constituted political advertising. The letter alleged that Saving Austin “appears to be a sham, dark-money organization created to shield the true identity of those spending money to influence Travis County elections."

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

Chris Gober, the founder of the law firm that formed the organization, is the treasurer of Musk’s pro-Trump PAC, according to FEC filings. The three directors of Saving Texas listed in its most recent corporate disclosure are former staffers for Cruz, who is a client of Axiom and Gober’s firm.

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

Write to Joe Palazzolo at Joe.Palazzolo@wsj.com and Dana Mattioli at dana.mattioli@wsj.com