President Trump speaks about Fulton County FBI investigation at Georgia event
In a speech in Georgia, President Trump commented on the FBI’s seizure of ballots in Fulton County.
In recent days, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have questioned top election officials in Wisconsin about the 2020 presidential election, according to people familiar with the conversations.
The agent met with Robert Kehoe, deputy administrator of the Wisconsin State Board of Elections, earlier this week and discussed with Kehoe how elections are conducted in Wisconsin and various election theories. Officials said Mr. Kehoe debunked false claims and revealed how elections work.
One of the sources called the conversation “a professional interview by a career FBI agent.”
An FBI spokeswoman did not immediately respond to questions. A spokesperson for the state election board declined to comment.
The interview came as election officials in Wisconsin and Milwaukee prepare for possible action from federal authorities over their administration of the 2020 election that President Donald Trump falsely claimed won.
Election officials have been on high alert for much of this year, since federal agents seized hundreds of boxes related to the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, in January, and the FBI issued a grand jury subpoena seeking voting information in Maricopa County, Arizona, in March.
Like Georgia and Arizona, Wisconsin is at the center of President Trump’s baseless claims that he won the 2020 election. President Trump claimed without evidence that thousands of fraudulent votes gave former President Joe Biden a victory in that year’s Wisconsin election.
How about 180,000 Milwaukeeans voted in the 2020 presidential election could be at risk of becoming public if the FBI forces election officials to turn over voting data to justify Trump’s election defeat in key battleground states.
The ballots in question are part of a wave of votes in Wisconsin’s liberal-leaning Dane and Milwaukee counties that President Trump sought to destroy at his expense during a recount of the 2020 presidential election, which saw a surge in absentee voting due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump lost re-election in Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia in 2020, but continues to falsely claim he actually won, despite court rulings, audits and reviews showing he lost.
If federal authorities expand their investigation to include tracking voting data in Milwaukee, about 176,000 absentee ballots with registers and ID numbers could be turned over.
State law requires absentee ballots counted at central counting facilities to include a voting list number, which can be matched to information in the poll book to identify the voter.
Normally, ballots from elections held more than five years ago would have been thrown away by now. But those ballots still exist, in part, thanks to a lawsuit filed against the city by a New London man who has filed dozens of lawsuits against state and local election officials over the 2020 election and other voting issues.
The Justice Department is suing Wisconsin officials for refusing to turn over confidential voter information that state election officials say is protected under Wisconsin law.
The federal lawsuit is one of about 20 filed by the Trump administration across the country seeking to turn over voter rolls without redacted personal information.
Journal Sentinel reporter Mary Spicuzza contributed.
Molly Beck can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.
