by Erik Gunn, Wisconsin Examiner
December 28, 2023
Minocqua brewery owner and political gadfly Kirk Bangstad says he will go to court to force the Wisconsin Elections Commission to keep Donald Trump off of the state’s presidential ballots in 2024 under the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Bangstad filed a complaint with the elections commission Thursday demanding Trump’s exclusion. The election commission’s dismissal came almost immediately afterward, in a letter saying that the complaint “is being disposed of without consideration by the Commission.”
Bangstad had anticipated the commission’s rejection, telling reporters immediately after he filed the document that he expected it would be dismissed and that he would sue the commission in circuit court to press the complaint’s demand. After receiving the dismissal notice Bangstad said he would follow up with a lawsuit next week.
Bangstad said that he views Article 3 of the 14th amendment as a clear-cut justification for keeping Trump from running for president again.
His elections commission complaint says, “Donald Trump disqualified himself and forfeited his right to serve as President of the United States of America by choosing power over the oath he took as an officer of the United States to uphold the Constitution of the United States and engaging in an insurrection against the Country he swore to protect.”
It calls on the six commissioners to find Trump “disqualified from serving as President of the United States of America” and to “refuse Donald J. Trump access to the 2024 Republican presidential preference primary ballot.”
The complaint cites a Wisconsin statute that allows a voter who believes that an election official’s action or failure to act “is contrary to law” or an abuse of discretion to file a complaint with the commission “requesting that the official be required to conform his or her conduct to the law.”
The commission’s response to Bangstad, signed by a staff attorney, says: “It is the position of the Commission that a complaint against the Commission, against Commissioners in their official capacities, or against Commission staff, warrants an ethical recusal by the body.” The response also cited a 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court opinion that declared “it would be nonsensical to have WEC adjudicate a claim against itself.”
And in a followup message that Bangstad posted, attorney Angela Sharpe wrote that as the commission interprets it, state law “no longer bars an individual from commencing an action or proceeding regarding the complaint in a court of law.”
After receiving the response, Bangstad wrote on the Minocqua Brewing Facebook page, “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.”
Trump is currently awaiting trial on federal charges related to Jan. 6, brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith, leading some critics to say that attempts to remove the former president from the ballot are premature without a conviction.
Bangstad is arguing that Article 3 doesn’t require a person to be convicted of committing an insurrection — “just simply [you] were part of an insurrection,” he told reporters at a news conference in the first-floor lobby of the Tommy G. Thompson Center, where the elections commission’s offices are located.
This is the second time Bangstad has sought to block candidates from the Wisconsin ballot for their actions on Jan. 6, 2021 — the day Congress met to certify the November 2020 election and supporters of Trump rallied and assaulted the U.S. Capitol, delaying certification for hours.
In 2022 Bangstad sued in federal court to keep Wisconsin Republican Congress members Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald, as well as Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, from running for reelection that year. He charged that all three promoted lies that Trump had won the 2020 election, and Tiffany and Fitzgerald voted against certifying the election on Jan. 6.
That lawsuit was dismissed, with the judge telling Bangstad that he should have first gone to the elections commission, which has the responsibility of certifying candidates running for election.
The brewer said he filed the 2022 lawsuit in federal court because he didn’t trust the Wisconsin Supreme Court to fairly address his claims in that case. At least three of the conservative judges then on the bench were “heavily in the pockets of Donald Trump,” he said, siding with the Trump campaign’s attempt to block certification of the 2020 election in Wisconsin.
Justice Brian Hagedorn was the only member of the conservative block in 2020 to reject the Trump campaign’s appeal. “If he had voted the other way, we would have had a constitutional crisis and potentially a civil war,” Bangstad said.
He said the state Supreme Court’s ideological shift with the election in April of Janet Protasiewicz — whom Bangstad actively supported — made him hopeful that his petition to keep Trump off the ballot will get a fair hearing as it works its way through the court system.
Bangstad has previously said a challenge to Trump’s ballot status would be a waste of time and money, but the Colorado Supreme Court’s 4-3 ruling on Dec. 19 to block Trump from that state’s ballot changed his mind. On Thursday the Colorado Republican Party appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Bangstad criticized both Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland for their handling of events surrounding the 2020 election and the events that followed.
Kaul, he said, should have acted to prosecute 10 Republicans who posed as electors and submitted false election certification documents that declared Trump had won in Wisconsin. On Dec. 6, the Republican fake electors settled a lawsuit filed against them over their actions, signing an acknowledgement that Biden won the 2020 election in the state.
Bangstad criticized the makeup of the elections commission — by law, with three Republicans and three Democrats — as “designed to fail.” He also said the elections commission’s decisions are also suspect because one of the fake electors, Robert Spindell, remains an elections commission member despite calls by Democrats and some nonpartisan voting right activists for him to be ousted.
On the grounds that the Wisconsin Department of Justice never comments on whether it is conducting investigations and into whom, except under special limited circumstances, Kaul’s office has declined to say directly whether the 2020 fake electors’ scheme is part of an active investigation by the department. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
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