Wisconsin GOP leaders say Trump is ‘misinformed’ after the former president claimed they are hiding election corruption

WISCONSIN DELLS – The most prominent Republicans in Wisconsin face their party’s base Saturday just hours after former President Donald Trump sought to turn the GOP faithful against them. 

On the eve of the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s annual convention, Trump released a statement blasting legislative leaders over Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’s effort to review the results of the 2020 presidential election — which Trump claimed to be a “cover up.”

“Wisconsin Republican leaders Robin Vos, Chris Kapenga, and Devin LeMahieu, are working hard to cover up election corruption, in Wisconsin,” Trump said in a statement Friday evening.

The attack over the 2020 election came as Wisconsin Republicans were set to kick off their 2022 campaign at the state convention just after Vos inked two contracts with retired police investigators to conduct a new investigation of the election results. 

“Don’t fall for their lies! These REPUBLICAN ‘leaders’ need to step up and support the people who elected them by providing them a full forensic investigation. If they don’t, I have little doubt that they will be primaried and quickly run out of office.”

Vos and LeMahieu in separate interviews said Trump’s statement was misinformed. 

“We are already doing a forensic audit. I think this is one of those cases where the president is just misinformed by his staff or he didn’t see the media reports,” Vos said.

Vos said Trump’s comments wouldn’t change the course of the investigation or how it would be carried out. He also noted a portion of the state’s voting machines were already audited through the the Wisconsin Election Commission’s duties that follow each election. 

Vos is paying retired police officers nearly $20,000 so far at taxpayer expense to investigate the results of the 2020 presidential election that have been under scrutiny by Republicans after Trump falsely claimed massive voter fraud led to his loss. 

Under two contracts Vos has signed in recent weeks, the officers will investigate potential “illegalities” and leads brought forward by an earlier review by the Assembly’s elections committee or through media reports. The contracts require the findings to be “confidential.”

The review accompanies one Republican lawmakers ordered the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau to conduct and follows a third review by the Assembly elections committee earlier this year.

But it’s not just Trump who isn’t satisfied with how the new investigation will be conducted. 

Rep. Janel Brandtjen, the chairwoman of the Assembly Elections Committee, told a conservative radio host Thursday she would like to review voting machines — which Vos said Saturday wouldn’t be part of the review. 

“We have to be able to look at the machines, we have to be able to look at the ballots and we have to look at the voting list to make sure that we don’t have people abusing a list that hasn’t been cleared before elections,” the Menomonee Falls Republican said on WTAQ-AM’s “The Regular Joe Show.”

You can find out who your legislators are and how to contact them here.

Contact Molly Beck at molly.beck@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MollyBeck.

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