FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 17, 2026
CONTACT: info@erictoney.com
INSPECTOR GENERAL: Kaul, WI DOJ Overpaid Abolish-the-Police Group, Failed to Properly Review Grants
FOND DU LAC, WI – A new report from the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that a Wisconsin group billed nearly $46,500 in questionable costs to a federal crime victim grant, and that Josh Kaul’s WI DOJ should have caught it. Freedom, Inc. – a group that has called for defunding and abolishing the police – was overpaid taxpayer-funded grant money after the office of Attorney General Josh Kaul failed to properly review invoices submitted by the group. According to the OIG, had Kaul’s DOJ properly reviewed those invoices, it would have flagged the problem. Read coverage of the OIG report here.
“A radical group that wants to abolish the police just fleeced Wisconsin taxpayers – Josh Kaul failed yet again,” said Eric Toney, Republican nominee for attorney general. “We need accountability at the WI DOJ. Our crime labs are chronically delayed, northern Wisconsin has gone from four DOJ narcotics agents to zero, and fentanyl has flooded into our communities. Wisconsin cannot afford a third term for Josh Kaul.”
In 2021, under the Biden Administration, the federal government listed Josh Kaul’s WI DOJ as “high risk” for federal grants after it failed to resolve federal audit findings involving his Office of Crime Victim Services. Questions were raised at the time about costs submitted by community groups the WI DOJ had awarded federal grants to, which were supposed to help crime victims. Federal auditors flagged the problems in 2019, and Kaul’s DOJ was given extra time to provide documentation – but more than a year later, it still hadn’t resolved them, triggering the “high risk” label.
This is not a new relationship. Freedom, Inc. received $876,674 in grants from Kaul’s DOJ in his first year and a half in office. When questions came up in 2020 about taxpayer dollars going to a group that called for defunding the police, Kaul’s office defended the grants.
Kaul’s failures leading WI DOJ keep stacking up. The nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau found Wisconsin’s crime labs are taking longer to test evidence despite fewer items to test and more staff. Northern Wisconsin was left with zero DOJ narcotics agents, which Red Cliff Chairwoman Nicole Boyd said has caused “many unnecessary deaths.” A report on missing and murdered Indigenous women still hasn’t been released by Kaul’s DOJ.
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