MADISON – At least two Milwaukee police officers were interviewed this week about the 2020 presidential election as part of a federal probe unfolding in the Badger State nearly six years after President Donald Trump lost to former President Joe Biden.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is seeking interviews with a host of Milwaukee election officials and staff who helped administer the 2020 election at a time the Trump administration is relitigating his 2020 loss in key battleground states.
Biden defeated Trump by about 21,000 votes – a result that has been confirmed by lawsuits, recounts paid for by Trump, audits, among other avenues. Still, Trump contends his loss was a result of widespread voter fraud that has, so far, not been proven to be true.
At least two police officers were interviewed on June 2, sources with knowledge of the interviews told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. None of the officers interviewed is under investigation, the sources said.
The interviews were expected to focus primarily on officers who were at the City of Milwaukee’s central count location on Election Night, sources previously told the Journal Sentinel.
Part of the questioning surrounds an incident on the night of the election when former Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Claire Woodall briefly left a flash drive in one of the voting machines, the sources said. The incident became fodder for conspiracy theories about the validity of the election outcome.
The flash drive was never left unattended by other staff members, and one of them provided it to a police officer so it could be taken to the county clerk’s office, according to Woodall at the time.
The Journal Sentinel first reported that the FBI was investigating Wisconsin’s 2020 election and that an agent had spoken with the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s deputy administrator, Robert Kehoe.
Agents also sought to question one of Milwaukee County’s top election officials at her home and reached out to at least two people who helped administer Milwaukee’s 2020 election.
The FBI’s investigation is in a preliminary phase, and no ballots had been seized in Wisconsin, sources told the Journal Sentinel.
The Wisconsin probe comes after federal officials in January seized hundreds of boxes of ballots related to the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, and after the FBI issued a grand jury subpoena in March for voting information in Maricopa County, Arizona.
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Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin have all been central to Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election.
There is no evidence to support claims of widespread fraud in Wisconsin’s 2020 election. Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman led a fruitless review of the election outcome, which cost taxpayers more than $2 million and turned up no evidence of wrongdoing.
If federal officials advance an investigation of the 2020 election in Milwaukee, it’s possible that poll books and nearly 180,000 absentee ballots with attached ID numbers could be turned over to investigators. Since state law requires absentee ballots counted at a central counting facility to include poll list numbers, the data could be matched with poll book information to identify voters.
Election officials in Milwaukee have raised concerns about such a move, stressing that protecting voters’ privacy and their right to vote is a priority.
Ballots from the 2020 election typically would have been destroyed by now. But Milwaukee’s 2020 ballots still exist, partly because of a lawsuit filed against the city by a New London man who has sued state and local election officials over the 2020 election and related issues.
Molly Beck and Mary Spicuzza can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com and mspicuzza@jrn.com.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: FBI interviews at least 2 Milwaukee police officers in 2020 probe
Reporting by Molly Beck and Mary Spicuzza, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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