Tim Michels sues Republican Party activist Bob Dohnal in rift over 2022 governor's race

MADISON - Former Republican candidate for governor Tim Michels is suing a longtime GOP activist alleging libel and defamation after Michels was accused of promising to give the man $100,000 to hold political events during the 2022 midterms.

Michels, who was defeated by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in November, said the allegations leveled by Bob Dohnal, who writes the Wisconsin Conservative Digest and hosts an annual political rally in Wauwatosa, are false.

Michels' attorneys said in the complaint that Dohnal "has been aggressively spreading false and malicious lies for the past six months, concocting a story that Michels or his aides promised to pay Dohnal $100,000 to hold political rallies, and then used those falsehoods as the basis for filing an illegitimate legal grievance with the government bureaucracy responsible for investigating alleged campaign violations."

Dohnal, whose backyard political rally is known as the Chicken Burn, campaigned for Michels during the midterm election but quickly soured on the Michels campaign after the election and has sent several emails to reporters and prominent conservatives alleging Michels promised to pay him $100,000 to hold events for him and was never paid.

Dohnal also said he filed a complaint against Michels at the Wisconsin Ethics Commission.

"Why have I taken on the billionaire, Tim Michels organization, over their campaign? Cause it was the worst campaign run in the last 100 years," Dohnal wrote in an email on Thursday. Dohnal's attorney Thomas Frenn said in a statement to reporters, "The Michels Complaint is the greatest fiction and half-truths I have read in a pleading, I have seen in the last 45 years of law."

More: Bice: Internal campaign calendar shows Tim Michels kept a light schedule late in the governor's race

Michels sued Dohnal after Dohnal refused to retract his statements about Michels, according to the lawsuit's complaint.

"In his filing to the Ethics Commission, Dohnal never itemized how he arrived at the $100,000 sum, nor did he produce any documentation establishing that the Michels Campaign agreed to hire him or contract with him," Michels' attorneys wrote.

Molly Beck can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Tim Michels sues GOP activist Bob Dohnal in rift over 2022 campaign