MADISON - Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says his campaign has identified "a huge number" of potential forgeries among the signatures gathered by organizers of a recall effort against him — a group of detractors he described Tuesday as "whack jobs" and "morons."
Vos said Tuesday his campaign in recent days hired a private investigator and assembled dozens of volunteers to comb through the hundreds of pages of petition documents submitted by a group of Donald Trump supporters seeking to recall Vos over his unwillingness to grant the former president's requests to undo Wisconsin's 2020 election.
The campaign has found forged signatures and felons working for the recall campaign, Vos said.
"In Wisconsin, if you're a felon, you're not allowed to circulate. Well, they brought in people from out of state who are felons!" Vos told reporters following an event in Madison hosted by Wispolitics.com.
Recall organizers earlier this month submitted to the Wisconsin Elections Commission more than 10,000 signatures — nearly 4,000 more than required. But last week, elections commission staff determined the recall organizers did not obtain enough signatures from residents in the district Vos was elected in when the recall began, falling about 945 signatures short.
At the same time, Racine County prosecutors began receiving reports of area residents who did not agree to sign the petitions finding their names on the documents anyway. Racine County District Attorney Patricia Hanson told WISN 12 her office is investigating 27 complaints alleging forged signatures.
On Monday, the recall committee in a statement acknowledged the signatures the group submitted included forgeries but blamed the crime on "sabotage" and unidentified participants "recruiting individuals from outside Wisconsin."
"While the orchestrator remains unidentified, we are dedicated to uncovering the truth in collaboration with law enforcement," the group said in the statement. A spokesman for the committee did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment.
Vos has until Thursday to challenge the signatures submitted by the Recall Vos committee. He said Tuesday he expects to show up to 400 are duplicates along with "a ton of fraud," including affidavits from Racine County residents who say they were lied to about what petition they were signing.
He said the recall organizers represent a fringe segment of the Republican Party, describing them as "whack jobs."
"The challenge that we have is the people who organized this are so out of touch with reality," Vos said. "And I'm just going to keep saying it over and over again − they are morons. They are stupid."
Molly Beck can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.
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