The Wisconsin Office of Special Counsel Election Investigator Michael Gableman filed 70 subpoenas in the Wisconsin election investigation. The Western Journal reported Gableman filed subpoenas for state entities, the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC), state employees, mayoral staffers, and IT departments.
According to The Wisconsin Daily Star, Gableman has been clear that the investigation is not about overturning the results of the 2020 election. He said, “This is not an election contest. We are not challenging the results of the 2020 election. Rather, we are holding government officials accountable to the public for their actions surrounding the elections.”
Gableman has issued subpoenas for mayors and other election officials in five of Wisconsin’s major cities: Green Bay, Madison, Milwaukee, Kenosha, and Racine. The subpoenas were issued due to grants given to the cities for the election by a group funded by Mark Zuckerberg.
According to The Journal, “each mayor of the five cities took ‘good faith’ money. Racine allegedly received $60,000 and the other four cities received $10,000 each.” After the cities got the initial funding, the group, Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) sent the cities a questionnaire to determine if they were eligible to obtain a full $8.8 million grant.
The Journal said that CTCL’s questionnaire “asked what the city was going to do to drive up the vote in what they deemed were historically disenfranchised neighborhoods.”
The Journal reported that the more recent subpoenas are hoping to gather information about what the cities did with the funding and if it influenced the elections by obtaining data such as “records, depositions and more information on the election process and organizations that seem to have had a hand in the administration of elections.”
An unnamed source who is close to the investigation told The Journal that the recent subpoenas “were all in-state for the WEC, mayoral staffers, IT records and more. But while the subpoenas issued are all in-state, Gableman’s team anticipates additional subpoenas for others involved in the election.”
Gableman’s team is expecting pushback on the new subpoenas, but “the investigation will continue.” The Journal reported that Gableman is willing to move to higher courts “as necessary, in order to keep investigating all of what went on in the 2020 election.”
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Hayley Feland is a reporter with The Minnesota Sun and The Wisconsin Daily Star | Star News Network. Follow Hayley on Twitter or like her Facebook page. Send news tips to [email protected].
Photo “Michael Gableman” by WI Office of Special Counsel.
