fbpx

News

Dan Kelly Campaigns Alongside Jan. 6th Attendee & Violent Extremist

Mar 24, 2023

Dan Kelly Campaigns Alongside Jan. 6th Attendee & Violent Extremist

MADISON, Wis. — Dan Kelly’s ties to election deniers and right-wing extremists have drawn headlines across Wisconsin, with new reporting this week on Kelly’s campaigning with Stop The Steal activist Scott Presler and his appearance at an event headlined by Matthew Trewhella, an anti-abortion extremist who was investigated as a possible conspirator in a violent campaign against abortion clinics during the 1990s.

See more coverage of Dan Kelly’s connections to the extreme far-right fringe:

  • Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Dan Kelly appeared at an event Tuesday in western Wisconsin headlined by a Brookfield pastor who has called the murder of an abortion provider “justifiable homicide,” advocated for the creation of anti-abortion-focused militia and compared coronavirus pandemic-related mask mandates to the Holocaust.”
  • Wisconsin Examiner: “A right-wing activist who planned several ‘stop the steal’ protests and was on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack has spent the month of March in Wisconsin campaigning on behalf of conservative state Supreme Court candidate Daniel Kelly.”
  • WJFW: “Dan Kelly said he had no problem with someone who was on the U.S. Capitol grounds during the January 6th insurrection campaigning for him across the state… When asked if it bothers him that Presler was present at the Capitol insurrection, Kelly said ‘no.’”
  • Associated Press: “Dan Kelly on Wednesday posted a video on Twitter of himself standing side-by-side with conservative activist Scott Presler and thanking him for his work. Presler, a Virginia native, planned several ‘stop the steal’ rallies in addition to being on the Capitol grounds the day of the insurrection. Presler also described the siege on the Capitol as ‘the largest civil rights protest in American history.’”

“Dan Kelly is inextricably linked to the far-right fringe, both through his campaign, but through his own work as an attorney in the years before and after his time on the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” said Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesperson Haley McCoy. “Kelly’s decades-long commitment to right-wing special interests and his latest embrace of dangerous extremists make it clear that Dan Kelly is unfit to serve.”

###