While the special counsel’s nearly 150-page report closed with recommendations for the state’s legislative body, Gableman stressed from the get-go that the report did not seek to re-analyze the re-count that occurred in late 2020. Nor was the report’s purpose to challenge certification of the presidential election. Rather, the report represented a small step toward fulfilling “the duty of all citizens of our State and our nation to work hard to secure our democracy for this generation and the next,” the special counsel explained.
From the details exposed in Monday’s special counsel report, the state legislature has much work to do to address “the numerous questionable and unlawful actions of various actors in the 2020 election.” The first unlawful action, according to the report, concerned the payment of grant funds to five Wisconsin counties that were used to facilitate voting. That arrangement, Gableman wrote, violated Wis. Stat. § 12.11, which prohibits election bribery by providing it is illegal to offer anything of value to or for any person in order to induce any elector to go to the polls or vote.
According to the report, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg providing financing that allowed the Center for Tech and Civic Life to offer nearly $9 million in “Zuck Bucks” to Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, Kenosha and Green Bay counties. In exchange, the “Zuckerberg 5,” as the report called the counties, in effect, operated Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts. Those grant funds then paid for illegal drop boxes to be placed in Democratic voting strongholds.
