Gregg Walker Lied to the Minocqua Police

Which led the the arrest of 7 people at the Minocqua Brewing Company taproom on June 27th

Kirk Bangstad here, owner of the Minocqua Brewing Company.

While I normally prefer to focus my energy on how Wisconsin can resist our national descent into authoritarianism, I’ve once again been caught up in what has now become an annual effort to protect company from being run out of town by out-of-control local politicians, and what has now become a monthly effort to protect myself from being jailed by an out-of-control County Sheriff and his partner-in-corruption, right-wing newspaper editor Gregg Walker.

My essay today will show that Gregg Walker lied to the Minocqua Police and used the legally triggering words “threaten” and “harass” to escalate a benign interaction between the two of us from across a highway into a dragnet that led to the arrest and imprisonment of 7 people using over 20 police officers from four jurisdictions.

In the above audio clip provided to my company by the Minocqua Police Department after our “Freedom of Information Act” request, you’ll hear Gregg Walker’s voice telling the police dispatcher three lies on the night of June 27th that ultimately led to arrest of 6 of my customers and me. Here are those lies:

1. My audience and I were on his property (we were on my property across Hwy 51 North).

2. My audience and I were threatening him (we were laughing and jeering at him).

3. My audience and I were harassing him (No more than an opposing football team’s fans harass the other team’s fans from across a football field).

Here’s the video that I took while Walker was calling the police that shows how far we were away from him, which alludes to his biggest whopper—that we were on his property. And while I might have been slightly inebriated and boisterous, there was absolutely no way one could construe that my audience and I were threatening or harassing him—simply because he was so far away.

But the words “threaten” and “harass” are trigger words that he has probably been coached to use while calling the police because those words can legally hurt me.

Why?

Last October, Gregg Walker convinced Sheriff Hartmann and DA Jillian Pfeiffer to arrest me for “criminal defamation” after I posted a satirical cartoon that criticized his treatment of a 3rd grade public school teacher. While I’ve made the argument that Wisconsin’s criminal defamation statute is inherently illegal given SCOTUS’ 1964 decision in Garrison v Louisiana, I was nonetheless released on a bond that forced me to not “harass, threaten, or intimidate” Gregg Walker until the matter was settled in court.

It is no coincidence that Walker used those two words when calling the cops, because they gave the Sheriff “probable cause” to arrest me for “bail jumping.” What was even worse is that Sheriff Hartman made the diabolical stretch to book me on a “felony witness intimidation” charge, which forced me to stay in jail until a judge could set a new bond 24 hours later (the judge appropriately dropped that ridiculous charge in the process). I suspect Hartmann was coached to use that charge against me by Walker’s lawyer—because while corrupt, I don’t think he’s that smart.

Of course, it takes dirty cops, dirty district attorneys, and dirty judges to be complicit in illegally taking away a man’s freedom, and we’ve witnessed all three in Oneida County over the last few months.

A week after my arrest, Walker’s attorney was able to convince Vilas County Judge Martha Milanowski to grant a temporary restraining order that forced me to stay at least 300 feet away from Walker—a number that meant that I couldn’t technically step foot on my own property without breaking the law—because Walker’s newspaper is within 300 feet of my taproom.

That order was illegal, and my attorney Fred Melms was able to get it removed within a few days with the following pleading:

By signing that temporary restraining order in the first place, however, Judge Milanowski signaled that she was willing to accept—without much thought— whatever Walker’s attorney Matt Fernholz filed in her court. Note that Fernholz lives 4 hours away in Waukesha County, and he’s the attorney for Republican Assembly Leader Robin Vos and the Republican Party of Wisconsin. I live in her neighboring county, pay property taxes, and am a tourism juggernaut for the Northwoods. But in Wisconsin, circuit court judges are elected, and if you want to be a judge in Vilas County, you’ll need the help of the local Republican Party. I suspect Judge Milanowki’s allegiances to the Republican Party outweigh her desire to give a successful local businessman the benefit of the doubt.

My next court date in Milanowski’s courtroom is on July 18th, and I suspect she’ll place a permanent restraining order on me with regards to Gregg Walker, and that means that Sheriff Hartman will have more tools at his disposal to find probable cause to arrest me in the future.

I don’t think an investigative journalist could make a better case for government corruption in Wisconsin’s Northwoods than I have over the last few years, but where have all of my public missives like this one gotten me?

Absolutely nowhere, because the politician we’ve entrusted to break up county corruption is one of the weakest Democrats in our state. Attorney General Josh Kaul is Wisconsin’s top law enforcement officer and Oneida County DA Jillian Pfeiffer’s boss. He could lean on her to toss this illegal criminal defamation case against me, which would remove the artificial bonds that enable Sheriff Grady Hartmann to keep arresting me. He could also launch an investigation into Hartmann’s conversations with Gregg Walker, Lakeland Times’ manager Heather Holmes, Republican Attorney Matt Fernholz, and DA Jillian Pfeiffer to determine if they are collectively abusing law enforcement to silence my progressive voice.

I’ve filed complaints with Kaul’s office, emailed his government affairs director, and used my large platform to publicly call for him to step in and help me. So far, I’ve gotten no response.

I’m hoping that if you’re reading this right now, you might be able to email him as well at josh.kaul@state.wi.us.

If he receives 1000 emails on my behalf, he might take his head out of the sand and consider doing his job instead of wooing Wisconsin’s non-existent swing voter by not making waves before eventually running for governor.

Until then, my legal team is working around the clock on no less than 6 lawsuits that all stem from this county’s desire to shut me down.

No small businessman would have been able to withstand this onslaught of government harassment without help, and I’ve been able to get that help because I’ve demonstrated that my company is dedicated to saving Wisconsin’s Democracy. We’re not only one of the founding members of Wisconsin’s current resistance movement, but we’ve spent millions of our Super PAC dollars to keep Wisconsin blue over the past 4 years.

It is obvious that the harassment against my company is part of a larger statewide effort to silence us, because we’ve been effective in helping progressives win elections. I think folks following my company know that my local fight is emblematic of our the larger fight for the soul of our country. If you agree, please consider chipping into our legal defense fund here.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company. Regardless of whether we can finally convince AG Kaul to do his job, or finally convince the multitude of other Democrats who seem hope someone else will save the day, I’ll keep fighting….

…for you, me, Wisconsin, and America.

Kirk Bangstad

Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company

Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC