WisconsinEye
Peter Bernegger at an informational hearing on February 9, 2022.
Bernegger testifying about purported voter fraud at a state committee hearing.
Near the end of a May 21 hearing in Dane County Circuit Court, a man who was quietly sitting in the gallery walked out when the judge refused to dismiss a criminal case against Peter Bernegger, a Wisconsin election denialist and online personality.
“I’m sorry, this court is totally out of jurisdiction,” the man said.
Circuit Court Judge Nicholas McNamara paused before responding: “Thank you for leaving,” he said.
It was a contentious moment in an otherwise quiet hearing for Bernegger, who has filed 18 lawsuits alleging fraud or election misconduct against election officials and offices in courts across Wisconsin. He has additionally filed lawsuits against Robin Vos, the Joint Committee on Legislative Organization and the Department of Natural Resources. Bernegger was in court May 21 on felony charges he faces for simulating legal processes by unlawfully modifying a subpoena.
Michael Wagner, director of UW-Madison’s Center for Communication and Civic Renewal and an expert on disinformation, tells Isthmus that Bernegger has filed numerous complaints “that, to my knowledge, have not made a claim that a court or administrative body has viewed as accurate.”
Bernegger, age 61, is a New London resident and the grandson of Armella and Fritz Bernegger, founders of the New London-based meat company Hillshire Farm. Bernegger was convicted by a Mississippi jury in 2009 on felony charges of mail and bank fraud related to start up companies We-Gel and Citrus Products International, which, respectively, “purported to make gelatin out of catfish waste” and “sought to make limonin out of lemon seeds” according to a 2011 U.S. Court of Appeals filing.
He describes himself as a citizen journalist and posts to more than 30,500 followers on X, alongside operating an election denial website and appearing on right-wing podcasts and online shows. Bernegger did not respond to requests for comment sent to the email address of his website, Election Watch. Calling the website’s phone number returns a “we could not complete your call” message.
Bernegger’s start in election denialism began shortly after the 2020 presidential election, when Joe Biden beat Donald Trump. His claims frequently involve figures such as Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe, and Attorney General Josh Kaul and Gov. Tony Evers, both Democrats.
Some prominent state Republicans bolstered Bernegger’s profile after the 2020 election. He testified about purported voter fraud to the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, which described him as a “data analyst,” in February 2022 and worked with Michael Gableman, the former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who was hired by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) to find evidence for election fraud. Gableman’s investigation cost Wisconsin taxpayers more than $2 million and found no evidence of widespread fraud.
Rep. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison), a member of the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, tells Isthmus that when she found out that Bernegger would testify to the committee her first thought was, “this is part of a show, right?”
“He would come to these hearings or go to the press or file complaints with volumes and volumes of data that doesn’t draw the conclusions that he claims it draws,” Subeck says. Bernegger’s allegations of fraud concerning Wisconsin’s voter lists were denied by the Wisconsin Elections Commission in a hearing the following week.
Subeck says actors like Bernegger provide ammunition for people who “can be very dangerous” and might intimidate voters or cast further doubts on election administration.
“You know, you don’t have to be the one doing it to play a role in it,” Subeck says. “[Bernegger] rallies the troops, so to speak, among this relatively small but very vocal contingent that is still in denial about the 2020 election and still trying to cast doubt on future elections as well.”
Harassment and threats against election officials have grown in recent years and drawn the attention of the U.S. Justice Department, which created a task force on the issue in 2021. The 2024 general election in Wisconsin will be run by 4 out of 10 clerks completely new to administering an election, according to the Wisconsin County Clerks Association; some clerks have pointed to vitriol directed toward election officials as one of their reasons for leaving.
Bernegger’s litigation has targeted a number of clerks and election officials statewide. In September 2023 he filed a Waupaca County lawsuit challenging Wolfe’s right to hold office.
“[Wolfe has] become the subject of Bernegger and in all of these other people’s wrath and conspiracy theories and election denialism, unfairly,” Jay Heck, executive director of government watchdog group Common Cause in Wisconsin, tells Isthmus.
Heck says Bernegger and other election denialists “made a lot of charges” when testifying before the campaign committee in February 2022, but were “reluctant or silent” on their ability to produce evidence. Heck notes that while none of the Republican commissioners in the WEC have backed Wolfe’s removal, many Republican lawmakers have.
He says it’s because “they are fearful of this far right conspiracy group, including Bernegger.”
“As long as the top of the ticket approves, and by that, I mean the presidential ticket, approves of these types of conspiracy theorists, there will always be oxygen for people like Bernegger.”
In Bernegger’s ongoing criminal case, one of two open cases filed against him, he could face up to a $10,000 fine or three-and-a-half years in jail for unlawfully modifying a subpoena. He is represented in the case by Wendy Patrickus, a Milwaukee-based defense attorney most famous for representing serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in his 1992 murder trial. Patrickus did not return a request for comment.
According to a February criminal complaint, Bernegger made additions to a subpoena Waupaca County Circuit Court Judge Troy Nielsen had signed for Bernegger on Aug. 3, 2023. The State Capitol Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Unit was alerted to the subpoena on Sept. 18, 2023, and an officer, Detective Brandon Kaiser, followed up with Nielsen on Oct. 11, 2023, to confirm the additions.
“The subpoena in question was received by the [Department of Justice] on August 8, 2023, and Capitol Police investigated,” says Tatyana Warrick, Wisconsin Department of Administration communications director. “Dane County Civil Process LLC delivered the subpoena to DOJ.”
The modified subpoena was intended for an election-related case Bernegger filed in Waupaca County against the Wisconsin Elections Commission, according to the complaint.
In a motion to dismiss filed on May 20, Patrickus argued the statutory arguments in simulating legal processes are “vague, subjective and overbroad” and that the criminal complaint against Bernegger did not “give facts as to how [the subpoena was] an imitation or in anyway mimics a valid legal subpoena.”
Bernegger has five open cases against election officials at this time; he has filed 23 cases against government officials since May 2021. The high number of cases he files is a concern for clerks and government officials, some of whom say the cases tie up resources and intimidate public servants.
Wagner, who is on the Isthmus board of directors, says people like Bernegger largely do not persuade the general public. Their impact is in “making election administrators miserable” by forcing already-busy officials to expend resources and time responding to lawsuits and requests.
But, he adds, “The more investigations that exist, the more complaints that are filed, the more losses that there are, the more that the public’s overall confidence in elections gets chipped away at.”
Wagner says that addressing disinformation, given stringent First Amendment protections on free speech, is a “difficult question.” Referencing a civil lawsuit filed against Wisconsin’s false elector slate, he says that using the courts as the “final arbiter of things that are true,” is one possible solution.
“You can lie on the radio or online and say, ‘It’s just my opinion, man,’ but when you’re under oath in a court, you have to demonstrate some of the things that you’re claiming,” Wagner says. “To the extent that people who are making these claims can’t back up their claims, legal remedies are reasonable ones.”
