Minocqua Brewery Owner Files To Get Trump Tossed From Ballot
Filing from super PAC is first step in process expected to end at Supreme Court.
Official portrait of President Donald J. Trump, Friday, October 6, 2017. Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead. Photo is in the Public Domain.
A liberal political action committee associated with a Northwoods brewery wants courts to bar former President Donald Trump from Wisconsin ballots.
At a press conference Thursday, Kirk Bangstad of the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC said he filed a complaint against Trump with the Wisconsin Elections Commission. In a statement, the Commission said the complaint was “disposed of without consideration.” Bangstad said that rejection from the commission, which comprises three Republican and three Democratic members, will allow him to file a complaint in circuit court, with the expectation that the case will end up before the state Supreme Court.
The ballot challenge follows similar efforts in Colorado and Michigan, and ongoing efforts in other states. In Colorado, judges last week barred Trump from the state’s ballot after finding he had engaged in “insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021 and was constitutionally barred from holding federal office. Trump has said he will appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In Michigan, the state Supreme Court on Wednesday reached the opposite conclusion, finding Trump would remain on that state’s presidential primary ballot.
“I’ll be damned if we don’t at least try in Wisconsin to do what Colorado was able to do,” Bangstad said at the press conference.
The Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC is associated with the brewery, which funds it with proceeds on sales of beer and merchandise themed around Democratic politicians.
In October, a jury in Oneida County found Bangstad had defamed the publisher of a Minocqua newspaper when he falsely implied in social media posts that the publisher stood by and let his younger brother die in a hunting accident, along with other false allegations. The court fined Bangstad $750,000 in the case, which he has said he will appeal.
Also in October, Bangstad’s super PAC filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of Wisconsin’s private school voucher program. This month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to take up the lawsuit. Bangstad has said he will pursue the same challenge at the circuit court level.
In October 2021, the super PAC filed a federal lawsuit seeking to force school districts to require masking to protect children against COVID-19. That lawsuit was dismissed in March 2022.
Liberal super PAC files challenge to Donald Trump’s ballot access in Wisconsin was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio
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trump sent an armed mob to attack the US Capitol. His people had been planning to steal the election for weeks using a combination of legal BS and violent force. He even had the wife of a Supreme Court justice on board. Whatever the Wisconsin courts do with this, the U.S. Supreme Court does not want to touch this case. Why?
Because their new rules of “originalism,” and “textualism” both require a result that trump is not qualified under the 14th Amendment. No trial is required. It was trump who argued for months that Obama was disqualified because he was not born in the U.S. He said the 14th Amendment applied automatically. What will he say now? The usual forked tongue nonsense that laws apply to other people but not him. History via the “Federalist Papers,” the arguments made in Congress when the 14th Amendment was adopted and the plain text all require trump be disqualified. Most people see the US Supreme Court for what it is – an extension of the Republican party. They cannot get out of this and rule in trumps favor without tossing all the new rules they created out the window. Public faith in the court was already nearing rock bottom. We shall see if they believe in the rule of law or just in raw judicial power devoid of an objective ruling based on the law.