This picture is a parody and intended for "entertainment purposes only"--the same language Fox News uses to defend themselves from defamation lawsuits.
Hi everyone,
We’re eerily close to what I believe will be the end one of the craziest periods in U.S. history—the Trump era.
I liken this period to other historical inflection points: the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the Cultural Revolution in China, and the Weimar Republic in Germany that gave rise to Stalin, Mao Zedung, and of course Hitler, respectively.
When I read about these events in college, I always wondered how the hell entire countries were duped into following psychopaths.
Now I know.
Fortunately, I believe that enough Americans have learned about the history of fascism to avoid repeating it here at home, and that we’ll turn the page on November 5th and finally leave this insane Trump era behind us.
Here in Wisconsin, the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC has emptied its coffers over the last few months to do our part to save American Democracy in our crucial swing state. We spent tens of thousands of your dollars traveling the state to help recruit volunteers to “Get Out The Vote” with Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin and Citizen Action of Wisconsin, and we’ve put up over 30 strategic billboards over the last 6 months reminding Wisconsinites, who are sick and tired of being gaslit by Trump and his conservative media, that what they've seen with their eyes and ears is indeed THE TRUTH.
Speaking of signs, here some pics of the 4 signs we just put up along busy HWY 41 last week. We raised enough from you yesterday to put up one or two more before Nov. 5.
Because there’s not a lot more we can do as a Super PAC for Wisconsin, I’m going to spend the rest of this essay today updating you on what has happened since I was thrown in the Oneida County Jail last Tuesday for two counts of “criminal defamation.”
In short, nothing has happened.
After being thrown in jail for over two hours last Tuesday for a misdemeanor, which is practically unheard of, I’m supposed to show up in court tomorrow at 1:30pm even though I haven’t officially been charged yet by the Oneida County District Attorney. We’ve not yet been told WHO called the sheriff on me, WHO I supposedly defamed, nor even WHO was ultimately responsible for throwing me into jail.
We think this is what is happening, but this is only a conjecture (conjectures are by definition not statements of fact, thus can’t be used against me in defamation lawsuits):
When Jillian Pfeiffer, the Oneida County DA, found out that Republican Sheriff Grady Hartmann threw me in jail using “trumped” up charges (pun intended), she probably went into immediate damage control.
She probably knows that there’s no way Oneida County is going to come out of this without a losing lawsuit on their hands, and she’s probably figuring out how to protect her reputation as much as possible from Hartmann's boneheaded arrest before filing anything in public.
Since I posted the story of being jailed last Tuesday, I’ve received about 20 emails from former or current Wisconsin law enforcement professionals who said that what happened to me was crazy.
Here’s just one of those notes:
“Mr. Bangstad:
Good luck and I completely agree with the persons you quoted, that the authorities reacted in a very unprofessional and unusual manner. As a former state and federal prosecutor, and as a defense attorney, I have never seen an arrest made on a non-violent misdemeanor allegation and especially for a matter that arose out of a resolved civil lawsuit.”
--Steve Morgan
Another supporter sent me a very informative article called “When Complaining About a Public Official can Land you in Jail,” that basically states that “criminal defamation,” while still on the books on Wisconsin, is no longer recognized as a constitutional basis of criminal prosecution in the vast majority of states since the landmark 1964 Supreme Court Case Garrison vs. Louisiana.
In this 2023 article, the ACLU argued that the case it was trying to bring to America’s Supreme Court, in which a man in New Hampshire was illegally jailed by a local detective after being accused of covering up for a dirty cop, should render “criminal defamation” laws unconstitutional throughout America. Unfortunately, SCOTUS denied to hear that case—meaning that in a smattering of states, including Wisconsin, these laws are still on the books.
Speaking of Wisconsin, the aforementioned article referenced a 2009 paper written by UW Milwaukee Professor David Pritchard, in which he analyzed the 61 criminal prosecutions of criminal defamation in Wisconsin between 1991 and 2007 (side note—David Pritchard testified in my defense last year during my disastrous defamation trial presided over by one of Wisconsin’s most incompetent judges, Forest County's Leon Stenz.)
In short, the gist of Pritchard’s paper was the following:
- Wisconsin’s appellate courts and our Supreme Court has not had the opportunity to change Wisconsin’s criminal defamation law since the landmark 1964 Garrison vs. Louisiana decision.
- A vast majority of the 61 criminal defamation prosecutions in Wisconsin have come in small towns.
- Most of these prosecutions, when presented with a 1st amendment defense, were dismissed or lost at trial. Alternatively, most of those who were found guilty of criminal defamation couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer to mount that defense.
Now that I’m armed with a little Wisconsin history and have had several days to reflect on my imprisonment, my mind hasn’t changed about what I think happened. Again, I say this is what I “THINK” happened because we’ve heard absolutely nothing from the Oneida County DA. I also say “THINK” because I intend these statements to reflect no actual malice towards Gregg Walker, the publisher of Minocqua’s and Rhinelander’s papers of record—an OBVIOUS PUBLIC FIGURE subject to the high standards of defamation intended for public figures like him.
- Walker, who agreed to settle our 4-year-long civil defamation suit merely weeks ago, wasn’t happy that my insurance company paid most of the settlement and that his lawsuit didn’t ruin me.
- When asking Republican operatives in Wisconsin (most likely his and Robin Vos' shared attorney Matt Fernholz) about ways he could continue to hurt me financially and put me out of business, he was told about this archaic criminal defamation statute. Given that his civil suit was victorious at the local level because his “useful” Judge Stenz repeatedly mis-interpreted Wisconsin defamation law, he figured he’d get just as much help this time around with other local MAGA judges to keep draining my resources in criminal proceedings.
- Walker or a Walker accomplice convinced Sheriff Hartmann, a Rhinelander native who has worked in the Oneida County Sheriff’s office for nearly 25 years and was appointed Sheriff by Republican Governor Scott Walker in 2013 and was then supported by the Oneida County Republican Party in his 2014 re-election campaign, to throw me in jail for criminal defamation--after which Hartmann told the local NBC affiliate, WJFW, he couldn’t remember any other time in his career that he has seen that charge.
So after tomorrow’s hearing, my attorney Fred and I have a lot to do.
- If they press charges, I’ll need to defend myself from what will surely be another few years of criminal proceedings meant solely to drain my bank account and drive my progressive business out of Minocqua.
- We plan to file a federal lawsuit against Oneida County in Wisconsin’s Western District (Madison) regardless of the charges. These claims will range from false arrest and malicious prosecution to political harassment and political retaliation.
- We are considering filing an “original action” to Wisconsin’s Supreme Court to strike “criminal defamation” from Wisconsin’s constitution so that our state can join most of the rest of civilized America to protect typically powerless citizens who don't have the means to defend themselves from this too-often abused archaic law.
Thanks to your donations last week, we raised over $20K to get these legal actions rolling. If you agree that what Oneida County did last week was beyond the pale and should never again happen to anyone in Wisconsin, please consider chipping in to our Legal Defense Fund.
As I said last week, what's going on in Oneida County has to stop. Rural Wisconsinites shouldn't have to live like we're in an episode of the "Dukes of Hazard," for crying out loud.
The politics of Republican retribution and retaliation, unleashed with full fury during the Trump era, is from a different American age altogether...an age well before the Civil Rights movement when we didn't have strong public schools to teach diversity and tolerance nor strong public institutions to protect civil liberties.
We went through all this crap over 60 years ago, and we came out better, wiser, and less-ignorant as a country. We simply can't go back, and that's why we MUST MARCH TO THE POLLS ON NOVEMBER 5.
The MAGA movement and it's assault on education and intelligence is what has pulled America back to our much uglier past.
We must defeat them resoundingly in November, up and down ballots all over America, so we can get back to electing politicians who believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for ALL Americans, not just rich, white, Republican, Christian men.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company.
Together, we'll end Trump's politics of retribution and drag Oneida County's Old Boy's Network back into the 21st century, one beer at a time.
Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC
Please Donate to Minocqua Brewing Company's Legal Defense Fund Here