Background: Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally Friday, Aug. 5, 2022, in Waukesha, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File)/Inset: Appearing in court this week, former election official Kimberly Zapata appears in Milwaukee County Circuit Court. YouTube screengrab Fox affiliate WITI.
A Wisconsin election official who said she was just trying to point out flaws in the voting system when she sent three military absentee ballots with bogus information to a Trump-allied state lawmaker, has been convicted by a jury of felony misconduct in office and three misdemeanor fraud charges.
The jury reached its verdict in State of Wisconsin vs. Kimberly Zapata on Wednesday, according to a review of the online public docket for the Milwaukee County Circuit Court.
First charged in 2022, state prosecutors accused Zapata, then the deputy director for the Milwaukee Election Commission, of using an official work computer that October to access the website, My Vote Wisconsin. From there, she procured three ballots for military absentee voters. The ballots were mailed to clerks in three towns and contained fake information, including the voter names and Social Security numbers, that she added.
Zapata then used her credentials as the deputy director for the city’s election commission to access a database to find the home address for Wisconsin State Rep. Janel Brandtjen, a Republican lawmaker who from 2020 onward has proclaimed, despite zero evidence to support it, that President Joe Biden lost Wisconsin to Donald Trump. Trump endorsed Brandtjen’s failed state senate campaign in 2023.
At trial this week, a recording was played for the jury where Zapata confessed that it wasn’t an illicit scheme she meant to pull off by manipulating the absentee ballots and sending them to Brandtjen.
Rather, Zapata said was tired of election misinformation spreading like wildfire. Zapata claimed her workplace had been receiving threats at a rapid clip from voters who thought the 2020 presidential election was steeped in fraud, including threats suggesting she and other officials should be put in front of a firing squad. Her boss testified that she had moved to a different location because of the threats.
Zapata’s supervisor testified at trial and corroborated this, according to ABC affiliate WISN.
For her, it was about proving there was a legitimate loophole in the absentee ballot system that could be exploited, Zapata’s attorneys argued. But prosecutors rejected that wholesale, arguing her so-called experiment was illegitimate.
“She is not a whistleblower. She’s not exposing information. She’s committing election fraud. As a society we cannot tolerate people who break the law when there are multiple legal means to raise those same concerns,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Westphal said during closing arguments, according to The Associated Press.
Zapata said she confessed to her then-supervisor and now the current Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Claire Woodall that she sent the bogus ballots. This happened just as Rep. Brandtjen had gone public about receiving them, Woodall said.
At trial, Woodall testified that Zapata was frustrated that “people like Rep. Brandtjen focused on election fraud issues that aren’t real.”
When she was first charged, Zapata pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In response to that claim, Rep. Brandtjen released a statement, WISN reported. If Zapata had wished to raise these concerns with her, she could have done so anonymously by contacting the appropriate authorities rather than jeopardizing her job and reputation, the lawmaker said.
No one has come forward to address the issue Zapata said she was trying to expose in the first place, either.
Zapata will be sentenced on May 2. She is facing up to five years in prison.
Her attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Meanwhile, Brandtjen is in the middle of legal troubles all her own.
WisPolitics first reported last month that the Wisconsin Ethics Commission recommended prosecutors file felony charges against her as well as a joint fundraising committee for Donald Trump, known as the Save America Joint Fundraising Committee.
The commission alleged she and that committee engaged in a conspiracy to buck campaign finance laws to unseat the Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos following Vos’ push to discredit claims by Trump of rampant voter fraud in the state.
Brandtjen did not immediately respond to Law&Crime’s request for comment on the findings.
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