Comment MADISON, Wis. — The Republican speaker of the Wisconsin House said Tuesday that former President Donald Trump called him “within the last week” seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden. Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Robin Voss (R) told WISN in Milwaukee that he received a call from Trump after the state Supreme Court ruled on July 8 that most absentee ballots in Wisconsin are illegal. The decision concerns future elections, not the one Trump lost in 2020 by more than 20,000 votes in Wisconsin. “It’s very consistent. He’s making his case, which I respect,” Voss told WISN. “He would want us to do something different in Wisconsin. I explained that it is not allowed by the constitution. He has a different point of view.” Voss said Trump then posted about him on social media. In a July 13 post on Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform, the former president repeated his baseless allegations of voter fraud and falsely accused the speaker of letting Democrats “get away with ‘murder.’ “ “What a waste of a brilliant and courageous decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” Trump wrote. Ballots are not allowed in Wisconsin, according to Supreme Court rules On Tuesday night, Trump told Truth Social that Vos’ Republican opponent, Adam Steen, could benefit if Voss does not take action. The qualifiers are on August 9. A spokesman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment. “This is no time to hide, but time to act!” Trump wrote. “I don’t know his opponent in the upcoming Primary, but I feel confident that he will do well unless Speaker Vos moves with gusto. Robin, don’t let the voters of Wisconsin down!” After facing criticism from Trump last year, Vos hired former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gambleman to review the 2020 election, even though recounts and court rulings had shown Biden won the election. Gableman in March said Republicans who control the Legislature should consider certifying in the 2020 election. Vos rejected the idea because legal experts, including Gableman’s own attorney, James Bopp Jr., said that such a thing is impossible. Over the past year, Vos said he has been talking regularly with Trump, even though they don’t see eye-to-eye on how to approach the 2020 election. Vos did not immediately respond to a request for an interview Wednesday morning. Steen said he has not spoken to Trump, but that the former president’s comments fuel his campaign. He criticized Vos for not advancing the resolution seeking to overturn the 2020 results. “If you really want people to know that their vote counts, you want to find the answer, so what it does to me is spit in the face of men and women who have given their lives for this country,” he said. Trump’s continued push to overturn the 2020 election results comes as hearings for the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol showed that Trump’s actions set the country on a path to violence that day. Figures from the panel show that Trump chose to escalate rather than defuse tensions surrounding the election on at least 15 occasions. The committee’s next hearing, scheduled for Thursday night, will focus on Trump’s actions while the US Capitol was under attack and breached. Trump’s choices set the nation on the path to the violence of Jan. 6, the panel finds The Wisconsin case decided this month by the state Supreme Court was brought by two suburban Milwaukee men represented by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Freedom after about 2 million people voted absentee in the November election. 2020, mainly due to the coronavirus pandemic. There were 528 drop boxes in use in the state’s 430 townships for the 2020 election, according to the Wisconsin Board of Elections. After the conservative group argued in a lawsuit that nothing in state law indicated absentee drop boxes were allowed, the case made its way to the state Supreme Court. On July 8, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 4 to 3 against the use of drop boxes, with conservatives in the majority and liberals in the minority. “An absentee ballot must be returned by mail or the voter must personally deliver it to the town clerk at the clerk’s office or a designated alternate location,” Judge Rebecca Bradley wrote for the majority. Some Republicans have seized on the ruling as a way to try to overturn the 2020 results, but the court’s ruling focused only on future elections, not past ones. The same court refused to accept a lawsuit filed shortly after the 2020 election that sought to invalidate those results because of the use of drop boxes. In a ruling at the time, the justices wrote that challenges to election procedures must be made before the election, not after. In his WISN interview, Vos downplayed Trump’s latest push to swing the Wisconsin results. “I think we all know that Donald Trump is Donald Trump,” Voss said. “There is very little we can do to control or predict what it will do.” Bella reported from Washington. Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.
