Rep. Janel Brandtjen, an election denier who backed decertifying the 2020 election, will lose her spot as chair of the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections next session, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos announced Thursday.
Rep. Scott Krug, R-Nekoosa, will replace Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, Vos announced.
A small percentage of voters and witnesses made mistakes on their absentee ballot certificates in 2020. Here are some examples of the kinds of errors that were either allowed or corrected by the clerk in order to permit the ballot to be counted.
Brandtjen will sit on the Assembly’s corrections and government oversight committees next session but won’t have a leadership role in either one, according to Vos. Brandtjen was the vice-chair of the government oversight committee last session.
Vos removed Brandtjen from her position after she used it over the last year to provide a platform to conspiracy theorists and deniers of the results of Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential election. She has maintained her work was in line with an Assembly resolution calling for the review of the 2020 election.
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Brandtjen recently announced a state Senate bid for a southeastern Wisconsin district that Republicans would have to win to obtain a supermajority in the chamber. She is one of several Republicans vying for the seat.
Beyond her committee work, Brandtjen also signed on as a co-sponsor to a resolution aimed at decertifying the 2020 presidential election, something that would be impossible under state law and the U.S. Constitution.
Brandtjen’s and Krug’s offices had not responded to requests for comment.
Vos’ removal of Brandtjen from the committee comes weeks after Rep. Rob Summerfield, the Assembly’s newly elected caucus chair, said Assembly Republicans voted in a closed meeting last month to no longer allow Brandtjen to participate in the chamber’s GOP closed caucus, citing Assembly Republicans’ lack of trust in her.
Brandtjen, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump in her 2022 Assembly campaign, supported Vos’ challenger in the Aug. 9 Republican primary, Adam Steen. Vos narrowly defeated Steen in the primary and again in the Nov. 8 election, in which Steen ran as a write-in candidate.
Coverage of Michael Gableman and the 2020 elections investigation
Read past coverage about Michael Gableman and the GOP-ordered investigation into the 2020 election.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos plans to pay former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman $44,000 to lead a probe of 2020 presidential election results in Wisconsin.
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Gableman's taxpayer-funded salary will be cut in half in the meantime, from $11,000 to $5,500 a month.
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"It appears to this court that at this point whatever records may have been responsive are gone … that's for a separate day," Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn said.
The grievance follows a similar complaint filed last month by a Dane County judge for Gableman's courtroom conduct where he refused to testify and accused the judge of being a "partisan" advocate.
Michael Gableman has turned on Speaker Robin Vos, claiming in a new robocall endorsing the speaker's primary challenger that Vos "never wanted a real investigation."
No Democratic opponent will appear on the ballot to face Vos, R-Rochester, in November, giving Vos a clear path to another term. Steen, an election denier, was boosted last week by a Trump endorsement.
Vos said his opinion of Michael Gableman soured after the lead investigator recommended the Legislature decertify the 2020 results.
