Lawmakers speak against DOJ investigation of Wausau mayor’s drop box removal
(The Center Square) – Several Wisconsin lawmakers are speaking out against the Wisconsin Department of Justice after its agents reportedly raided the home of Wausau Mayor Doug Diny and confiscated items, including Diny’s wife’s cell phone.
The investigation comes after Diny removed an unsecured and not-yet-active drop box in front of Wausau City Hall and put it in his office. The drop box has since been removed from his office and is open for ballots and payments to the city.
Diny’s removal of the ballot drop box led calls for an investigation, which the DOJ is reportedly in the process of completing. Diny’s home was raided last Wednesday as part of the investigation, The Federalist reported, in a move that Sen. Ron Johnson called the “actions of jack-booted thugs.”
Wisconsin Sen. Cory Tomczyk, R-Mosinee, called the investigation “ridiculous.”
“This is an infuriating abuse of power,” Tomczyk said in a statement. “It appalls me that we fund [Attorney General] Josh Kaul’s department to conduct politically motivated actions such as this.
“With all the issues our state has at the moment, this is what Josh Kaul has prioritized? Is there no more crime in Milwaukee? Have illegal immigrants stopped smuggling fentanyl into Wisconsin, killing our kids? Apparently Josh Kaul thinks those things have been dealt with and are not nearly as important as investigating a small town mayor moving a box.”
Tomczyk went on to call the investigation an “abuse of power” and saying that Kaul is “not fit for office.”
Last week, the Wausau Common Council chose not to take up and vote on a resolution this week from Mayor Doug Diny to add security for its ballot drop box.
The crime Diny is accused of committing is to conceal or withhold a ballot box, according to Dan Lennington, an attorney with the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.
“There are dozens of state laws that apply to ‘ballot boxes’ – no one really thinks all those provisions apply to drop boxes,” Lennington wrote. “It would actually be quite absurd. And as far as the other provisions here, the drop box didn’t have any ballots inside, wasn’t being used during an election, and was actually a box to place your utility bills in.”
The agents executed the search warrant while Diny’s wife was at home babysitting their grandchild, Lennington wrote.
“In my view …. this is a civil dispute between a city official and a city employee,” Lennington wrote. “The AG could have filed a lawsuit. The Clerk or WEC could have filed a lawsuit or issued a statement. They didn’t. Instead Democrats – once against – used the power of criminal law enforcement to execute a search warrant to “investigate” an event that the ‘defendant’ took a picture of and issued a statement about.”
