The law firm that helped set up Elon Musk’s America PAC has created a new, nationwide “election integrity” organization aligned with Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud, WIRED has learned.
The organization, a nonprofit called the Association of State and Local Election Officials, was established by a lawyer then at Lex Politica, the Musk-linked law firm founded by Chris Gober, who was chief counsel for America PAC in 2024 and is now running in Texas for a spot in the House of Representatives.
The board of directors, according to the nonprofit’s registration filing in Texas, boasts Florida secretary of state Cord Byrd, current and former state election officials in Georgia, a Michigan state representative, and the president of Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, a Trump administration-aligned election denial group. Byrd announced his involvement with the group—which he said won’t begin until after the election—alongside Florida governor Ron DeSantis in September, as the pair touted its mission, which aims to bring what they call “election integrity” policies down to the state and local level nationwide.
It’s not clear if Musk is involved in the organization. Until now, Musk has simply been a funder of Republican candidates and causes, and a benefactor of government contracts. Musk’s financial involvement in the midterm elections has been extensive: Musk’s America PAC is financing a sprawling canvassing operation aimed at helping Republican candidates get out the vote in November, and Musk is the single largest donor to Republican candidates this election cycle, spending more than $445 million, targeting Senate races key to maintaining a Republican majority. Since July, Musk has spent nearly as much money—$276 million—to boost Republican candidates as he did during the entire 2024 presidential election cycle. These elections are crucial for Musk. If Democrats win majorities in the House and Senate, Musk and his companies could be the subject of congressional investigations.
The link between a law firm that has worked with Musk and officials involved in purported “election integrity” activities is not surprising. For years, Musk has pushed the racist great replacement theory, which posits that minorities are systematically replacing white people in the US and in Western countries around the world. Election denialism—rooted in the unfounded theory of widespread voting by undocumented immigrants—is part of that racist theory of demographic societal change.
Musk has continually pushed election conspiracies that align with Trump’s false claims of election fraud, and this year, he’s doubled down. Musk has been a major disseminator of election misinformation this cycle, and recently boosted the false story that Texas US senate candidate James Talarico had been committed to a psychiatric facility in Ohio. America PAC has also spread inaccurate information about mail-in ballots.
The Association of State and Local Election Officials was first registered on June 17 by Michael Garcar as a nonprofit in Texas. At the time, Garcar was an attorney at Lex Politica, which was expanded after its lead lawyer, Gober, helped launch Musk’s America PAC. Gober has represented Musk’s and America PAC’s political interests in court cases in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
On July 20, the Association of State and Local Election Officials was granted tax-exempt status by the IRS, according to an agency letter addressed to the organization at its Washington, DC, address. That address—a box in a UPS Store on Pennsylvania Avenue—is the same as the one Garcar listed on the organization’s Texas filing and belongs to Lex Politica, according to a US Supreme Court filing from one of the firm’s attorneys, Erin Hawley, wife of Senator Josh Hawley. The nonprofit’s Texas registration was first unearthed by True North Research, a Democratic-linked research group.
Garcar has since left Lex Politica and now works for Five Rings Law Group. The firm lists just two partners—both Lex Politica alums—and former Koch Industries lawyer Jenny Kim. Before launching Five Rings, Kim worked for Gober.
Garcar, Kim, and Gober did not respond to questions about Lex Politica’s ties to the Association of State and Local Election Officials.
At a September 24 press conference about the organization, Byrd and DeSantis announced their partnership with the nonprofit and said the Association of State and Local Election Officials will use Florida’s hard-line voting and election rules as a “blueprint” to enact similar policies across the country.
Byrd said the organization would “have state chapters to support, educate, and train local and state election officials on election integrity, because that’s something that the other side has been very good at.”
“They’re the ones going in and certifying and training people who run our elections, and not doing it in a way that we think comports with the law and voter trust,” Byrd said. The association “will be a national organization to promote election integrity, principles, and federal law and policy,” he added.
Under Byrd and DeSantis’ leadership, Florida has enacted rules and laws that voting rights advocates have criticized, including passing a state version of the federal SAVE Act that requires proof of citizenship at polling locations and prohibits the use of student IDs to vote beginning in 2027. “I’m very excited to head up that initiative and take what we’ve done in Florida as the blueprint, as the model for the nation, take it nationwide,” Byrd said in September.
The offices of Byrd and DeSantis did not respond to questions about their involvement with the organization.
The organization’s board is also staffed by Sharon Bemis, the president of Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, the country’s most prominent election denial organization; Julie Adams, an election denier who is both a member of the Fulton County Board of Elections in Georgia and a regional coordinator for the Election Integrity Network; Janice Johnston, who recently left the MAGA-dominated Georgia State Election Board; and Michigan state house representative Ann Bollin, who has coordinated with the Election Integrity Network.
The organization’s board members did not respond to questions for this story, though Johnston and Bollin have both previously denied being election deniers. The organization’s Texas registration contains no information about its work, and the group does not appear to have a web presence.
But the presence of Johnston and Adams on the board is telling.
In Georgia, Adams has made a name for herself by pushing Trump’s conspiracies about widespread election fraud and has sued multiple times for access to voting records with the help of the Republican National Committee. She has refused to certify results without being allowed to inspect voting records.
Johnston recently left Georgia’s State Election Board for what she said were “family and personal responsibility” reasons, and her time there was marked by turmoil, partisanship, and legal battles based on false fraud claims. Under her direction, the election board pursued specious investigations of Fulton County, supported mass voter purges championed by election denial activists, and worked to effectively eliminate voting machines.
Adams and Johnston have long targeted Fulton County for supposed fraud, and gleefully celebrated when, in January, the FBI raided an elections warehouse there, seizing tens of thousands of ballots from the 2020 election. Johnston was one of the unnamed witnesses in the FBI affidavit that preceded the raid, providing information about alleged double-counted ballots to the agency that had already been investigated and proven to have had no effect on the outcome of the 2020 election.
The Justice Department briefly fought in court to keep her name hidden from public view, but described a witness in the affidavit as “a Republican-appointed member” of the State Election Board who previously “was an obstetrician,” which identified Johnston. As the raid was being carried out, Johnston went live on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast from an SUV parked nearby.
When asked about Johnston’s presence on the board of the new Musk-linked election denial organization, Sara Tindall Ghazal, the lone Democrat on the Georgia State Election Board and Johnston’s former colleague, replied, “lol.”
“I mean this quite seriously, ‘lol.’ That’s my comment,” she tells WIRED.
And while Musk has quietly increased his political funding of Republicans, he has taken a bit of a step back from publicly discussing or posting about US politics and elections—with the exception of Talarico. His most recent post about voting is from September, when he responded to a question from Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah. “Who benefits from noncitizen voting?” Lee asked on X.
“Democrats, which is why they push for open borders and noncitizen voting!” Musk responded. “Incentives explain behavior.”
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