The GOP-hired investigator and “Big Lie” proponent who filed a widely criticized report on Wisconsin’s 2020 election declared on Tuesday that “agents” of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg “took over the election” in some cities.
Michael Gableman, a former conservative state Supreme Court justice, defended his report earlier this month, testifying before the state Assembly elections committee that the legislature should “take a very hard look at the option of decertification” of the 2020 election. As a guest on Tucker Carlson Tonight on Tuesday, Gableman suggested that the Meta boss, rather than the voters, was responsible for Trump’s defeat, as the Fox News host nodded his approval.
“I expected to find a heavy influence of Zuckerberg money that came into Wisconsin and affected our elections, especially in our five biggest cities in the state: Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha, and Racine,” Gableman said. “But I’ve been shocked at how deeply—and, this is their word, embedded the private Zuckerberg agents or employees came in actually administering the elections in those cities to one degree or another. In some cities, they took over the election.”
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Gableman’s report—which cost taxpayers $676,000—targeted funding from the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a Zuckerberg-backed foundation that gave grants to local election administrations to help run a pandemic-era election. Gableman has characterized this money as “illegal bribery.” But those grants are legal, federal and state courts have ruled.
Gableman then complained about the political orientation of those involved with CTCL, who he claims ended up “taking over the public task” of administering elections. “The leader of [CTCL] had just finished her two-year Obama fellowship,” Gableman said. “And she didn’t have far to move, Tucker, after she graduated from that program, because the headquarters for CTCL…are right in downtown Chicago in the very office that was Barack Obama’s campaign office.”
At this point Carlson interjected: “Wait a second! I thought that the Zuckerberg effort of more than a quarter billion dollars was designed to safeguard our elections from Covid.”
“That’s why I call it a bait and switch,” Gableman replied.
Despite efforts from conspiracy-theory peddling Republicans like Gableman, Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin has been affirmed by recounts, lawsuits, and a nonpartisan audit. But none of these facts kept Carlson from lapping up what came out of Gableman’s mouth: that a Zuckerberg-orchestrated fraud had been perpetrated on the good people of Wisconsin.
“That’s exactly what happened,” the Fox News host declared at the end of the segment.
