Hi Friends,
I just filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission to bar Trump from Wisconsin's ballot. At the end of this email is the entire complaint we filed that we also sent to the press.
To watch the press conference, here is the Facebook Livestream of what happened.
Within hours of us filing, I received this email from Angela Sharpe, Staff Attorney for the Wisconsin Elections Committee, stating that the WEC refused to hear our complaint.
Here's the email:
While we didn't anticipate them refusing to even consider our complaint, we knew they would dismiss our claim in some way, because as I wrote on Christmas Eve, the WEC was created to fail by Republicans and created to deadlock in a 3 vs 3 partisan vote on any important political issue involving elections exactly like the one we presented to them today--namely banning a former president from the ballot for aiding and abetting an insurrection.
We felt that we HAD to go through this process because we were told by federal Judge Edelman in Wisconsin's Eastern district last March that any 14th amendment claims to remove Wisconsin's insurrectionists from the ballot, namely Senator Ron Johnson, and Congressmen Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald, had to go through the Wisconsin Elections Commission first.
But just to be sure, I wrote back to Staff Attorney Sharpe and asked her if we had made any mistakes in our filing and if we needed to simply refile in some other way so that the WEC would consider it. She clearly explained that the "WEC no longer bars an individual (me) from commencing an action or proceeding regarding the complaint in a court of law."
Well, that email meant that the WEC just punted, like almost every other judge, attorney general, or electoral body forced to look at Trump with regards to the 14th amendment.
We feel like this decision is a win for us because it saves my team about a month of having the WEC muddy the waters, and allows us to file in Dane County Circuit court early next week.
So that's what we're going to do. File a lawsuit against the WEC, Donald Trump, and the Republican Party of Wisconsin as soon as we can.
Now to do this, I have two immediate needs:
First, I have to expand my legal team in Wisconsin with lawyers who have some experience with Wisconsin's election laws. Trump is going to fight this every step of the way and surely outman my small current team. If you are a patriotic Wisconsin lawyer and believe you are the right person to help, please email us here .
Second, I have to pay the lawyers I'm recruiting to beef up this effort. If you are able to chip in, please do so here. I'm getting more and more familiar with how much it costs to get justice in the courts of Wisconsin, and this expense could easily reach $100K in a matter of months. BUT... I've raised this before simply with A LOT of small $40 donations. If you believe this effort is worth a try, and you were filled with hope when you read that Colorado was able to take Trump off of their ballot, then please try to help this effort.
That is all I have for now. When there's more news to report, I'll do it either here or on our Facebook page.
Thanks for reading and thanks for believing in the Minocqua Brewing Company.
Together, we can remove insurrectionists from Wisconsin's ballot, one beer at a time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company.
Here's a link to the entire complaint