A top Republican state lawmaker in Wisconsin plans to hire three retired police officers and an attorney to investigate vote fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos announced on Wednesday he would give the investigation a broad mandate that will allow the officers to pursue credible leads about potential vote fraud for the next three months.
“Is there a whole lot of smoke, or is there actual fire? We just don’t know yet,” Vos said, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Despite the many disputes about the voting process, Vos said he recognizes Joe Biden’s presidency, which was legally affirmed by the Electoral College, and is not trying to change the outcome of the election with this investigation.
Rather, he said wants the investigation to clear up many of the questions Republican voters still have about Wisconsin’s general election, specifically about how some of the state’s largest cities used $6 million in grants from leftist organizations to run their elections.
Wisconsin Democrats, however, have dismissed the investigation as a waste of taxpayer dollars.
“I think it’s unfortunate that the Legislature is using its resources to investigate what has already been thoroughly investigated,” Wisconsin Elections Commission Chairwoman Ann Jacobs said in a statement, “and it is my hope that, instead, they could work toward expanding opportunities and ease of voting for Wisconsin voters.”
Vos said he hopes to have results of the investigation in the fall, which is when the state’s nonpartisan audit bureau is set to conclude its audit of the 2020 election as well.
“My hope is that they come back and they build the case to show Gov. [Tony] Evers and the Democrats who are in the ‘Casablanca’ mode—‘nothing to see here,’ ‘everything’s fine,’ ‘they just want to suppress the vote.’ No. These are professional investigators,” Vos said.
“A sizable chunk of people believe the election was illegitimate,” he added. “And democracy cannot flourish if both sides don’t believe in the end both sides had a fair shot.”
