Top Wisconsin Republican hiring retired officers, attorney to investigate election

The highest-ranking Republican in Wisconsin’s state House has hired retired police officers and an attorney to investigate the 2020 presidential election. 

State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) revealed to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday that he was hiring three former law enforcement officers and an attorney to probe aspects of the state’s election vote.

The efforts are the latest example of Republicans on a state level taking steps to investigate President Biden’s victory over former President Trump in last year’s election. 

No evidence has surfaced of widespread fraud that would have affected the election, and critics in both parties have argued that the investigations risk eroding trusts in elections nationwide. 

In Arizona, one of several states that flipped from Trump to the Democratic candidate in 2020, GOP lawmakers have been conducting a controversial audit of ballots.

Last week, a judge in Georgia agreed to unseal absentee ballots in Fulton County as part of a lawsuit alleging that thousands of fake ballots were cast there.

Vos told the Journal Sentinel that the investigators will receive a broad directive to spend three months reviewing all tips on the election and that they will then follow up on the ones that are most credible.

The team will be permitted to investigate claims of double voting and to analyze how clerks fixed absentee ballot credentials, according to the Sentinel Journal.

The investigation will be funded by taxpayer money.

There has been no credible evidence of voter fraud in Wisconsin. The Associated Press reported last week that of the more than 3 million ballots cast in the 2020 election in Wisconsin, only 27 were deemed potentially fraudulent.

Biden won in Wisconsin by just over 20,000 votes, securing the state’s 10 Electoral College votes.

State officials confirmed Biden’s win in November after conducting a partial recount.

The investigators will have subpoena power, since they were brought on as contractors with the Legislature, Vox told the newspaper. Anyone who is ultimately subpoenaed, however, will not be subject to criminal prosecution, he noted.

Vos said he expects the team to file a report of its findings to him by the fall. He told the newspaper that the aim of the investigation is to identify laws that should be changed, rather than searching for people who are believed to have violated the law.

He told the Journal Sentinel that he hopes the investigators can get to the bottom of matters that Republicans have unsuccessfully brought up in court, including how the largest cities in the state used more than $6 million in grants from a private group to run their elections.

The Hill reached out of the Wisconsin secretary of state’s office for comment.