Hi Folks,
Today at 1 pm, I filed a lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court against Donald Trump, the Wisconsin Elections Commission, and the Republican Party of Wisconsin.
Here is the livestream of what happened.
Here's a link to the actual lawsuit.
Unlike what many headlines said, the Wisconsin Elections Commission, by denying our complaint last week, actually helped our efforts to remove Trump from the ballot by a) saving us crucial time, and b) helping to ensure that our lawsuit won't be dismissed by a judge on procedural grounds.
In our lawsuit, we asked for a declaration from a judge that Trump is unqualified for running for President under Article 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because he aided and abetted the Insurrection on January 6th, 2021.
We're asking for an injunction to prevent the Wisconsin Elections Commission from distributing ballots with Trump's name on them or counting votes for Trump.
We're also asking for a declaration that states that Wisconsin's presidential electors can't vote for Trump because he is unqualified to be president.
The constitution is clear. Just like you can't run for President if you're under the age of 35 or were born in a foreign country, you can't run for President if you engaged in insurrection after swearing an oath that you'd protect our country from harm.
According to the New York Times, over 700 people have already been convicted or pleaded guilty to having committed crimes that day, 450 of them sentenced to jail time for "crimes ranging from trespassing, a misdemeanor, to seditious conspiracy, a felony."
furthermore they wrote that "These proceedings have helped to flesh out the story of how an angry crowd of Mr. Trump’s supporters, egged on by his lies about a stolen election, stopped the democratic process, if only for several hours."
For anyone who refuses to acknowledge the truth, it is crystal clear that those who have been jailed for seditious conspiracy were part of an INSURRECTION, and that Trump's lies caused that insurrection.
If you are caught drunk driving too much, your license is taken away. No one is taking away your "choice" to drive. You forfeited that freedom by breaking the law. Similarly, no one is taking away your "choice" to vote for Trump. He forfeited his right to run by leading an insurrection.
Nowhere in the constitution does it say Trump has to be convicted of insurrection to be removed from the ballot.
That being said, the only reason Trump hasn't been convicted yet is because our federal and state Attorney's General, Merrick Garland and Josh Kaul, were too scared to a) hurt the former's chances at becoming a US Supreme Court Justice, and b) hurt the latter's chances at becoming Wisconsin's next Governor. They were simply too weak to take the bull by the horns and do the hard work of prosecuting Trump and Wisconsin accomplices Ron Johnson, Tom Tiffany, and Scott Fitzgerald immediately after the they had committed their crimes.
Just like red flag laws take a person's gun away from them temporarily if they are deemed a risk to themselves or others, it makes 100% sense to restrict Trump from running for an office that if successful, he will most certainly use to pardon himself and his co-conspirators, and most certainly will then go on to use to crush our Democratic institutions.
Sure, if in 2028, Trump has been exonerated on all four of the indictments against him that relate to insurrection and election interference (which will never happen), let him run for President then. But don't put our Democracy at risk by a) creating a legal condition of conviction that isn't written in our constitution, or because b) our chief law enforcement officers in the U.S. and Wisconsin couldn't lead when we needed them to.
Yes, our case is a long-shot, but so were the successful cases in Colorado and Maine.
As I told a New York Times reporter two days ago in an article released yesterday, a "brewer from Northern Wisconsin shouldn't be the one throwing Hail Mary's to get Trump of of the ballot."
Our leaders should be doing this, both the Republicans AND the Democrats. Unfortunately for our country, the former are by-and-large complicit with seditious conspiracy, and the latter have shown they simply lack the intestinal fortitude to do hard things.
Well, no one said life was easy, and most of us who have to get up everyday and work hard to earn a living understand that sometimes you gotta do hard things. I just wish we lived in a country where politicians haven't had the courage beaten out of them by the soul-sucking need to constantly beg for campaign donations.
This is just the start of a long and righteous effort to yet again save our democracy from a would-be dictator that should have been stopped years ago. This work involves lots of lawyers, and lawyers aren't cheap. Please chip in here to help us pay these lawyers in if you are able.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC