FBI agents have visited the home of Milwaukee County’s elections director, Michelle Hawley, leaving a business card after attempting to contact her, Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson said Wednesday, prompting sharp reactions from county officials. 

Citing an unnamed source, WISN 12 News reported that the FBI was interested in 180,000 absentee ballots cast during the 2020 presidential election that reportedly have not yet been destroyed. 

President Donald Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020 by about 20,000 votes, then unsuccessfully sought in court to overturn the results. 

In a statement Wednesday, Christenson said the county will follow up on the FBI’s attempt to interview Hawley. He defended the 2020 presidential election results in Milwaukee as fair, transparent and accurate. 

”This has been proven repeatedly over the last six years by the post-election canvass, the Presidential Election Recount, State court-based challenge, Federal court-based challenge, the forensic audit by the Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau, and two additional independent audits,” said Christenson. “Continuing to relitigate settled questions does not strengthen public confidence in elections but it undermines it.” 

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, reiterating that Trump lost the 2020 election, said that Trump has “crossed a line if he is sending FBI agents to the private residence of Milwaukee County’s elections director.” 

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has previously reported that the FBI recently interviewed Robert Kehoe, deputy administrator for the Wisconsin Elections Commission. 

Local officials “will always cooperate with law enforcement officers and the investigations they are pursuing, but this action raises serious concerns of intimidation,” Crowley said. “Regardless of how this situation evolves, the facts are clear: In 2020, election clerks did their jobs. The election was safe and secure. Donald Trump lost the popular vote in Wisconsin. No amount of fear and intimidation from the Trump Administration will change that truth.”

Trump and his supporters have persisted in denying that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election more than five years ago.

Word of FBI agents visiting election officials in Milwaukee comes after the federal agency seized 2020 ballots in Georgia earlier this year. The British newspaper The Independent reported that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was seen at the raid, and the New York Times reported that Trump called her on the phone during the raid.  Georgia was a focus of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, when he called Georgia’s secretary of state and falsely claimed he had won the state that year. 

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who is one of seven Democrats vying for the nomination in this year’s primary for governor,  is calling domestic violence a “public health emergency” after learning about the killing of a Kenosha woman, Makayla Plaza, 28, allegedly by her estranged ex-husband. Plaza’s attempts to get a restraining order against her ex-husband were shot down by a Kenosha County judge. 

In February, Plaza told the court she feared for her life and the lives  of her young children. But the judge denied her request for a restraining order. Markus Plaza, her 33-year-old ex-husband, was taken into custody after a 24-hour man-hunt following her death on April 1 TMJ4 reported that law enforcement found the man, Marckus Plaza, hiding in the basement of a salon. 

Makayla Plaza’s boyfriend said that her ex-husband would take her keys from her, lock her inside the house, and listen in on her phone calls. The Kenosha Police Department said that the husband had a history with the department, including an arrest for battery in February which resulted in no charges being filed. 

In a statement released through his campaign, Crowley said that “I have been sitting with this since I heard the news because I am also grieving,” recounting how his own friend Nancy Metayer — vice mayor of Coral Springs, Florida — was allegedly killed by her husband just days ago. Metayer was soon to announce her campaign to run for Congress. “Two women. Two states. The same devastating, preventable outcome. How many more?” Crowley said in his statement.

“I need Wisconsin to understand that this was not a fluke,” Crowley said. “This was not an isolated failure.” Rather, he said, tragedies like Plaza’s death are the result of underfunded shelters, understaffed courts and setting the legal  bar for protection “so impossibly high that a woman has to prove she is already in danger before we will act to prevent it.” He called for treating domestic violence as “the public health emergency it is.” 

Wisconsin has the tools and research it needs to make a difference, Crowley said, as well as the expertise of  social workers, survivors and advocates. “What we have lacked — what Wisconsin has lacked for too long — is the political will to act,” he added.  “I am done waiting.” If he is elected  governor, he said, tackling domestic violence would be a priority, including changing  how restraining orders are processed statewide, ensuring that survivors and their families have legal assistance and investing in mental health and substance use disorder treatment, as well as in domestic violence prevention and crisis support programs in all 72 counties. 

“So to the women of Wisconsin who are living this right now — I see you,” said Crowley. “If you are afraid, if you are trying to find a way out, if you have asked for help and been turned away or doubted or made to feel like what is happening to you isn’t serious enough — I want you to hear this directly from me: You are believed. What is happening to you is real. You deserve a system that fights for your life the way you are fighting for it every single day.”