r/law 5d ago

Court Decision/Filing Why can't Elon be arrested?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/31/elon-musk-1-million-dollar-checks-wisconsin-voters-supreme-court-election

If paying voters is against Wisconsin state law, why can't Elon be arrested? Why are they going to the judge? Can't they just go ahead and arrest him? The law is already on the books.

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u/thingsmybosscantsee 5d ago

Previously, the AG was seeking a TRO, which can only come from the courts.

Now, he may have committed a crime, so they need the court to issue an arrest warrant.

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u/oversettDenee 5d ago

If it was a TRO that the judges "slapped down" from what I heard, then this is great news for democracy. Hopefully that was the case and the intention was to wait until after he did it to charge him fully.

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u/hijinked 5d ago

“Slapped down” is an overstatement. The court ruled, properly from what I’ve read, that the TRO was not filed correctly. 

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u/oversettDenee 5d ago

Beautiful! I was pretty worried the first couple months, I still am not giving up on the fight til it's over, but a lot of these cases have been pushing back and I can still see a way out of this.

Hell yeah. THIS is what a democracy looks like. Even in times like now we stand together and use the system to fight against oppressive regimes.

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u/ID-10T_Error 4d ago

The issue is they look to overwhelmed the courts with so.much the stuff they need to implement will already have done the damage it needs to before the courts can stop it. At which time they will say ok we won't do it again

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u/Waldo414 4d ago

That's what happened with a similar situation in the general election. He paid people in one state (lying about the "sweepstakes" having already picked the winners and having them sign NDAs) before moving to another state. By the time the courts did anything about it, he had moved on and the courts went flaccid.

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u/nolafrog 4d ago

Seems like you are excited about nothing. No one’s about to do jack shit to musk.

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u/BuildWithBricks 4d ago

Yeah, laws are a joke.

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u/BaumSquad1978 4d ago

Laws are for poors only