Betsy DeVos, former president Donald Trump’s secretary of education, and her family have pumped money into Elon Musk’s super PAC despite the fact she resigned from his administration in protest of his actions on January 6.
DeVos was the second cabinet member to resign in response to Trump’s actions and the riot at the US Capitol.
“There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me,” she wrote at the time in her resignation letter. “Impressionable children are watching all of this, and they are learning from us.”
But according to Federal Election Commission reports from America PAC, the pro-Trump super PAC run by the Tesla and SpaceX executive, DeVos contributed $250,000 to the committee. The most recent FEC summary spanned the period between October 1 and 16.
Musk has become one of the most outspoken supporters of the former president. Over the weekend, he hosted a town hall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He also came under criticism recently, with Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner filing a lawsuit against the X/Twitter executive due to his $1 million giveaway to voters in Pennsylvania. Musk also joined Trump for a rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.
The latest report showed that Musk pumped in $11 million into the super PAC, making the total amount of money he has contributed $118.5 million. This also does not count Musk’s other Future Coalition PAC.
DeVos has been the longtime critic of public schools and supporter of charter schools and school vouchers to direct public education dollars to private schools. She has previously called for the abolition of the Department of Education.
She recently told The Detroit News earlier this year that she would work in the Trump administration again “only if it was with the goal of phasing out the Department of Education as we tried to do through budgetary process in the first administration”.
The DeVos family, including DeVos’s husband Richard “Dick” DeVos, has poured money into elections throughout the years.
The former secretary is not the only member of her family to contribute to the PAC. Her brother-in-law Doug DeVos, the co-chair of Amway, the company through which the family made its fortune, also contributed $250,000, as did his wife Maria DeVos. Her brother-in-law Dan DeVos, the chairman of the NBA team the Orlando Magic, and his wife Pam both contributed $250,000.
