FBI Wants to Interview Milwaukee Police Officers Related to 2020 Election

Claire Woodall prepares to export absentee ballots from a tabulator on election night 2020. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The FBI is looking to question several Milwaukee Police Department officers who were at Central Count, the city’s absentee ballot counting facility, during the November 2020 presidential election.

The 2020 central count was held on an upper floor of the then-vacant office building at 501 W. Michigan St. In addition to more than 100 election workers, the floor was filled with observers and media members. The proceedings were also streamed live online.

The election was overseen by then-Milwaukee Election Commission Director Claire Woodall, who was escorted by officers to the Milwaukee County Courthouse to deliver the city’s results in the early morning hours.

Conspiracy theories swirled because Woodall and the officers left the building, then had to phone an election worker to retrieve a forgotten flash drive from one of the tabulators. An officer and election worker delivered the flash drive to the courthouse.

“I believe it is important to document that the flash drive was never left unattended and that the staff had remained in the room throughout the process,” Woodall wrote in a 2020 letter to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. “The incident bears no impact on the validity of the results.”

All the paper ballots were recounted in the ensuing recount.

Despite the city repeatedly reporting the number of absentee ballots it had, conspiracy theories emerged, including from Donald Trump, because the totals are reported all at once late in the evening. Under Wisconsin law, absentee ballots cannot be processed until polls open on election day. There was a record number of absentee ballots because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier this week, Mayor Cavalier Johnson issued an open letter to Republican gubernatorial candidate U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, asking him to stop spreading doubt about the election and inviting him to tour the city’s election operations. Tiffany’s campaign did not respond.

FBI officials already attempted to visit the home of Michelle Hawley, who was the deputy Milwaukee County election director at the time of the 2020 election.

Matt Smith of WISN first reported the news of the MPD interviews.

There is no known evidence of tampering or wrongdoing in the 2020 election in Wisconsin. A full recount was conducted in Milwaukee and Dane counties, which expanded Biden’s margin of victory. Several lawsuits from the Trump campaign were dismissed. A legislative audit turned up no wrongdoing, nor did a state-funded investigation, initiated by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

And there go Milwaukee’s ballots pic.twitter.com/F2ioHyqFKx

— Jeramey Jannene (@compujeramey) November 4, 2020

Prior video got clipped, here is the full thing pic.twitter.com/eedMppcIkP

— Jeramey Jannene (@compujeramey) November 4, 2020