Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson said Thursday that a representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation visited the home of the county’s elections director and left a business card, a move he called unfortunate and intrusive. The county said it would follow up on the visit to determine why it happened.
Christenson said the 2020 Presidential Election was fair and transparent and that its results are accurate, pointing to repeated reviews over the last six years that included a post-election canvass, a presidential recount, state and federal court challenges, a forensic audit by the Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau and two additional independent audits. He said a private home was the wrong place for the contact and that the Election Commission’s office should have been approached directly.
“I can confirm that a representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation visited the home of my Elections Director and left her business card,” Christenson said. “It is unfortunate that the FBI chose to visit the private residence of Milwaukee County’s Elections Director rather than contact the Election Commission’s office directly.” He added that no dedicated public servant should be subjected to that kind of intrusion for doing her job with integrity and professionalism.
The visit was reported Wednesday and was not immediately clear in its purpose. Spectrum News said it had not been confirmed that the contact was related to the 2020 election, though the reporting tied it to ongoing disputes over Wisconsin’s presidential vote. Donald Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020 to Joe Biden by nearly 21,000 votes, and the result survived lawsuits, recounts, reviews, audits and Michael Gableman’s own investigation.
County Executive David Crowley, speaking Thursday, called the situation irritating and said the repeated relitigation of the 2020 election was mind-blowing. He said it was a distraction from current concerns facing residents and warned that if the FBI did visit the elections director’s home, it raised serious concerns of intimidation. Christenson said Milwaukee County would cooperate with all legitimate law enforcement actions, but would defend its democracy and the rights of county voters. That leaves the central question answered for now: the county says the visit should have gone through official channels, and it is treating the matter as a serious breach until it learns otherwise.
