Attorney General Brad Schimel suggests Donald Trump won Wisconsin because of the state's voter ID law

MADISON - Attorney General Brad Schimel this week suggested Donald Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 because the state had its voter ID law in place.

His comments drew a rebuke from liberals, who said they saw it as an admission by the Republican attorney general that the voter ID law suppresses Democratic turnout.

Voter ID is expected to play a prominent role in Schimel's re-election bid. He has fought in court to keep the law in place and his opponent, Josh Kaul, is the lead attorney challenging it and a host of other election laws.

"We battled to get voter ID on the ballot for the November '16 election," Schimel told conservative host Vicki McKenna on WISN (1130 AM) on Thursday.

"How many of your listeners really honestly are sure that Senator (Ron) Johnson was going to win re-election or President Trump was going to win Wisconsin if we didn’t have voter ID to keep Wisconsin’s elections clean and honest and have integrity?"

RELATED: Judge strikes down Wisconsin's early voting restrictions and part of state's voter ID law

Kaul represents two liberal groups in the lawsuit, One Wisconsin Institute and Citizen Action of Wisconsin Education Fund. One Wisconsin's Scot Ross called Schimel's comments a "shocking admission."

"Wisconsin's top law enforcement official has fought tooth and nail in court to defend a law he now admits rigs the rules to help Republicans win elections," Ross said by email.

Spokespeople for Schimel did not respond to questions about Schimel's comments. Kaul's campaign manager, Ashley Viste, declined to comment.

The comments echoed ones U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) made on the night of Wisconsin's presidential primary in April 2016.

"Now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is gonna make a little bit of a difference as well," Grothman told WTMJ-TV in explaining why he thought Republicans would win that fall.

Courts and experts have found voter impersonation fraud is exceptionally rare.

Trump won Wisconsin by more than 22,000 votes and Johnson won by more than 99,000 votes. Schimel did not say in his radio interview if he believed that many people would have fraudulently voted without the voter ID law, if he thought more Democratic voters would have turned up if the voter ID requirement were not in place or if he meant something else.

Schimel has had success keeping the heart of the voter ID law in place amid a barrage of legal challenges, but has lost parts of the litigation over some Wisconsin election laws.

Kaul's lawsuit challenged a broad swath of voting rules. In July 2016, a federal judge kept in place the requirement to show ID at the polls, but struck down a number of other laws, including restrictions on when and where early voting could occur.

Judge James Peterson found Wisconsin's voting laws discriminated against minorities and labeled the voter ID law "a cure worse than the disease" that tried to address "mostly phantom voter fraud." His ruling forced the state to make changes to the system it uses to issue IDs to those who have the most difficulty obtaining them, such as people who don't have birth certificates or Social Security numbers.

Both sides appealed the parts of the case they lost. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago heard arguments on the case more than a year ago but has not issued a ruling — taking an unusually long time for the appeals court.

In his comments to McKenna, Schimel also took a shot at liberal billionaire George Soros for bankrolling the challenge in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

Kaul "works for George Soros going across the country suing states that have voter ID laws," Schimel said.

Keegan Kyle of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin contributed to this report.