A Republican member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission said he doesn’t know right-wing provocateur Jack Posobiec although he praised him in a tweet.
The tweet, posted by Commissioner Bob Spindell last Thursday, was first spotted by Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“Thank you @JackPosobiec for tuning into the WIS Election Commission Meeting last night. I appreciate your kind words & all the hard work you do. I will keep you up to date on all the interesting things happening with the WIS Recount,” Spindell wrote, referring to the commission’s Wednesday meeting that set parameters for the partial election recount.
Republican @WI_Elections commissioner tweets for the first time in four months, a day after becoming a celebrity in one corner of the internet and gaining tens of thousands of followers. https://t.co/YDYQYsTHlu
— Patrick Marley (@patrickdmarley) November 20, 2020
On Friday, Spindell told CNN that he doesn’t know Posobiec and never visited his Twitter page.
“I do not know him, and I have not been on his Twitter page,” Spindell said. “Just to tell you how much I know about Twitter, I probably had, I don’t know, [100] to 200 people before this thing started. So, I really wasn’t involved in Twitter. But I guess I am now.”
In the interview, Spindell raised the possibility of widespread fraud, saying “there isn’t any evidence that there isn’t any” fraud that took place in the key battleground state. He added that because “every other item in human life has lying, cheating, and stealing,” a competitive election could too.
However, Spindell’s Twitter account shows that he follows Posobiec, who has also tweeted directly at the commissioner multiple times in recent days.
In one tweet, Posobiec said Spindell appeared to “save the Republic” after a TV interview.
Another tweet from Posobiec showed a video of ballot observers during the partial recount. He encouraged people to call Spindell after the footage showed one of the observers on her phone.
Call @BobSpindell! https://t.co/RgYTbtepdi
— Jack Posobiec ?? (@JackPosobiec) November 22, 2020
Posobiec is a pro-Trump activist and correspondent for the right-wing One America News Network. He has spread unproven theories related to alleged widespread voter fraud occurring in this year’s presidential election, alleging it was rigged in favor of President-elect Joe Biden.
The commentator is also known for live-streaming a 2016 investigation of Comet Ping Pong, the restaurant at the center of the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which accused Democratic officials of participating in a child sex trafficking ring.
Biden won Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes, a margin of less than 1%. The state does not offer an automatic recount, but a losing candidate may request one if the victor’s margin is at or less than 1 percentage point. Wisconsin is in the middle of recounts in two counties at the request of the Trump campaign.
President Trump has yet to concede to Biden and remains entrenched in litigation across multiple states in disputes that he was the actual victor of several key battleground states. Several media outlets declared Biden the winner of the election more than two weeks ago.
