Wisconsin Special Counsel Reveals Plan for 2020 Election Investigation

The Wisconsin Office of Special Counsel released a video on Monday outlining the “parameters of [its] investigation” into the 2020 election.

Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gablemen, who was appointed as special counsel by Wisconsin Speaker of the Assembly Robin Vos (R-63) over the summer, announced the details in a video released on Rumble.

“Investigations must not pre-judge people or evidence. Therefore, we are willing to discuss potential evidence with anyone who believes they have evidence,” Gableman began.

He then addressed the difference between an audit and an investigation.

“If we choose to do audits, the audits will be public. However, investigations are private until completed to prevent harming people or compromising evidence,” he noted.

The former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice then outlined how he expects public officials to interact with information requests from the investigation:

In trying to determine if the election was conducted properly, it is the duty of the public officials who are paid to run the election to answer questions and demonstrate that their management of the election was proper. If they refuse to cooperate, we will compel them to answer questions.

He then addressed his role as Special Counsel:

My job as Special Counsel is to gather all relevant information, and while I will draw my own conclusions, my goal is to put everything I know before you, the citizen, so that you can make up your own mind. An obstruction of this office is an obstruction of you.

You can watch the video here:

Earlier this month, Gableman asked the Wisconsin Elections Commission to preserve “any and all records and evidence … including … information retained on any and all voting machines.”

“Gableman won election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2008, defeating incumbent Louis Butler with 51.19 percent of the vote, and winning 60 of the 72 counties in the state,” Ballotpedia reported:

[He] was appointed to the Burnett County Circuit Court in 2002 by Gov. Scott McCallum (R). After that, he was re-elected to the circuit court and then elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in nonpartisan elections.

During the 2008 Supreme Court election, a progressive third-party group called the Greater Wisconsin Committee ran an ad criticizing Gov. McCallum’s decision to appoint Gableman to the Burnett County Court because Gableman lived outside of the county and was not listed as a final by the judicial selection committee. The organization also pointed out that Gableman had donated to McCallum’s re-election campaign, alleging that the donation had influenced McCallum’s decision. Gableman denounced the ad as “smear tactics” from a “shadowy interest group.” Gableman’s opponent Louis Butler did not refute the content of the ad, but he asked the group to allow he and Gableman to run their own campaigns.

In 2018 Gableman chose not to run for re-election to another ten year term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and has been in private practice since then.

As Breitbart News reported.

Joe Biden was certified the winner of the November 3, 2020 Wisconsin election on November 30, 2020 by a margin of 20,682 votes, receiving 1,630,866 votes to Donald Trump’s 1,610,184 votes out of 3.3 million votes cast.

Wisconsin was one of several key battleground states in which Joe Biden was narrowly certified the winner in the 2020 presidential election. Wisconsin’s ten Electoral College votes were awarded to Biden and contributed to his 306 to 232 Electoral College victory, which was confirmed in a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021.

Wisconsin was also one of several states at the center of the controversy over the private funding of election administration in 2020.

The private funding of election administration during the 2020 election was highly controversial. Mark Zuckerberg’s $419 million donation to two nonprofit organizations was at the center of that controversy in Wisconsin. $350 million of Zuckerberg’s donations went to the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), whose activities in Wisconsin will likely be scrutinized by the Special Counsel’s investigation.

Those activities were the subjective of an investigative report by Wisconsin Spotlight in April:

Chicago-based CTCL used $350 million in donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife to fund grants to help cities deliver a “safe, inclusive, and secure voting process in 2020 elections.”

The city of Waukesha, with a population of 72,000 people, eventually received a CTCL grant for $42,000, according to elections officials. Racine, slightly larger, got a grant for $9,420,000 more — $900,000 more than Waukesha. It was part of $6.9 million in total CTCL grant funding to the five largest cities.

Green Bay, a city of about 104,000 residents, was awarded nearly $1.1 million in the first wave of grants in July. It received another half million dollars in September. The combined $1.6 million in CTCL grants amounted for more than four times Green Bay’s 2020 elections budget.

In June, Breitbart News reported, “the Wisconsin Supreme Court refused . .  to hear a case challenging the legality of the use of drop boxes for absentee ballots in the 2020 presidential election.”