Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Expands Investigation into Zuckerberg-Funded CTCL

The speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly announced Thursday he is expanding the state legislature’s investigation into the conduct of several city officials and the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) during the 2020 election.

Center Square reported:

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, told News Talk 1130 WISN’s Dan O’Donnell on Thursday that he is hiring three former police officers to lead the legislative investigation.

“What I am most concerned about is making sure that when we have another election in 2022, we don’t have the same problems,” Vos said.

Reports point to outside, nonprofit groups like the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life using grant money to gain access to election operations in Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Racine and Kenosha.

Wisconsin is one of several key battleground states where the conduct of the CTCL and the Center for Innovation and Election Research (CEIR), another Zuckerberg-funded nonprofit, in the 2020 election has come under scrutiny, as Breitbart News reported:

Private funding of election administration was virtually unknown in the American political system until the 2020 presidential election, when Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated $350 million to the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), which provided funding to county and municipal governments around the country for election administration, and $69 million to the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), which provided funding to 23 state governments, primarily through the Secretary of State’s office, also for the funding of election administration.

In Wisconsin, the CTCL provided more than $6 million in local funding for the administration of the 2020 election, most of it going to five cities, known as the “Wisconsin 5,“–Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha, and Racine–as Wisconsin Spotlight reported in April:

[W]hat the grant money really purchased in battleground states like Wisconsin was the infiltration of the November presidential elections by liberal groups and Democratic activists, according to hundreds of pages of emails and other documents obtained by Wisconsin Spotlight.

In the city of Green Bay, which received a total of $1.6 million in grant funding from the Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life, a “grant mentor” who has worked for several Democratic Party candidates, was given access to boxes of absentee ballots before the election. Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein, Wisconsin State Lead for the National Vote at Home Institute, in many ways became the de facto city elections chief.

The emails show Green Bay’s highly partisan Democrat Mayor Eric Genrich and his staff usurping city Clerk Kris Teske’s authority and letting the Zuckerberg-funded “grant team” take over–a clear violation of Wisconsin election statutes, say election law experts.

This month, Wisconsin Spotlight reported:

Six Kenosha residents have filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission alleging the city allowed Mark Zuckerberg-funded, liberal groups to take over November’s election.

The action is the latest in a growing number of election law complaints against the “famous Wi-5” — Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine. But unlike in Green Bay, where the city’s clerk challenged the infiltration of the outside groups and meddling city officials, new emails show election officials in the other four Democratic Party strongholds were glad to go along for the well-funded ride.

The emails, obtained by Wisconsin Spotlight, show just how deeply entrenched the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life’s network of left-wing “partners” was in the administration of elections in the five cities. And just how partisan the activists are.

The MacIver Institute reported this month on issues of legal authority and propriety surrounding the use of CTCL grant funds in Milwaukee’s administration of the 2020 election:

Newly released emails paint a disturbing picture of how the City of Milwaukee ran the 2020 presidential election and again call into question the legality of liberal-leaning interest groups’ deep infiltration of municipal procedure. . .

It quickly became clear that this money came with strings attached.

According to the agreement the City of Milwaukee signed with CTCL, CTCL set the ground rules for how every penny of the money was to be spent, and Milwaukee was not allowed to “reduce or otherwise modify planned municipal spending on 2020 elections.” In addition, the city was not permitted to “use any part of [the] grant to give a grant to another organization unless CTCL agrees to the specific sub-recipient in advance, in writing.”

Joe Biden’s narrow 2020 certified victories in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia were key to his Electoral College win, as Breitbart News reported:

Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election when a joint session of Congress convened on January 6-7, 2021, and counted 306 Electoral College votes for Biden and 232 for Trump.

Had Trump won Arizona’s 11 electoral college votes (where Biden’s margin of victory was less than 11,000 votes), Georgia’s 16 electoral college votes (where Biden’s margin of victory was less than 12,000 votes), and Wisconsin’s 10 electoral college votes (where Biden’s margin of victory was less than 21,000 votes), the Electoral College contest would have been a 269 to 269 tie, which would have thrown the election into the House of Representatives, where each state delegation has one vote.

Wisconsin is one of several states, including Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, where various forms of audits and investigations into the 2020 election results are ongoing.