Headline: Wisconsin State Journal, 8/19/2022
“The absence of a person as Special Counsel may have an effect in the future if the Court orders the subpoenas to be enforced and depositions are to be taken, as the depositions are to be taken before the Special Counsel or his designee,” Bopp wrote. “However, this can be cured in the future with the appointment of a Special Counsel and does not implicate the Court enforcing the subpoenas now.”
The statement appears to contradict an earlier statement by Vos that Gableman’s office, not just his job, has been shut down. In announcing the firing last week, Vos said, “it is beyond clear to me that we only have one choice in this matter, and that’s to close the Office of Special Counsel.”
Vos’ office did not respond to requests for comment this week on the status of the lawsuits.
Meet Indiana's Big Bopper
Headline: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8/19/2022
The pair will be joined by lieutenant gove nominee Roger Roth at the Republican Party of Outagamie County Constitution Day Dinner on Sept. 9 at The Grand Meridian in Appleton.
Tickets are $50 per person, $90 per couple or $500 for a table of eight.
Michels' campaign did not immediately return requests for comment from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Friday afternoon.
The announcement comes the same week a Dane County Judge said Gableman "accomplished nothing" while costing state taxpayers more than $1 million.
Headline: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8/17/2022
Gableman didn't keep weekly progress reports as required by the Wisconsin State Assembly.
He conducted no witness interviews.
And he gathered "no measurable data" over at least a four-month span in 2021, the judge found.
"Instead, it gave its employees code names like ‘coms’ or ‘3,’ apparently for the sole purpose of emailing back and forth about news articles and drafts of speeches," Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington wrote in an opinion released Wednesday.
"It printed copies of reports that better investigators had already written," Remington added, "although there is no evidence any person connected with (the Office of the Special Counsel) ever read these reports, let alone critically analyzed their factual and legal bases to draw his or her own principled conclusions.”
Headline: CBS 58, 8/16/2022
"I think the original effort was worthwhile and I wish we could have stuck to that because it would have been able to prove whether or not there were serious problems with the election beyond what we already found."
Vos hired Gableman 14 months ago with a taxpayer-funded salary to investigate the 2020 election, but he produced no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
The Rochester Republican put an end to the probe after Gableman and former President Donald Trump endorsed his primary opponent Adam Steen, who Vos narrowly defeated by 260 votes.
Headline: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8/16/2022
"It's really a decision the courts have to make. I mean when you have a client and you decide to besmirch the very client that is paying you, I'm not a lawyer but I think that is against the legal code or the legal ethics or whatever it is," Vos said. "But that's for somebody else to decide."
\Headline: Daily Beast, 8/12/2022
The Wisconsin Republican Assembly leader on Friday fired the 2020 election investigator he hired 14 months ago to look into former President Donald Trump’s evidence-free claim that the election was stolen. Under pressure to open a probe, Robin Vos had hand-picked Michael Gableman, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, to lead one. But their relationship sourced to the point where Gableman and Trump endorsed Vos’ primary opponent, who narrowly lost to Vos on Tuesday night. Vos, in turn, called Gableman an “embarrassment to himself” and to the state. One catalyst for the firing was Gableman’s suggestion that Wisconsin lawmakers decertify the 2020 election, which is unconstitutional. Gableman even acknowledged privately to Vos that it was impossible. The probe, funded by taxpayers, became widely unpopular on both sides
Headline: Racine Journal Times, 8/12/21022
“While I agree with Vos that Gableman has been an embarrassment, he (Gableman) has also been incredibly dangerous for over a year since he was hired for this position. And, frankly, I believe that Speaker Vos thought he could control this narrative, but he cannot. He elevated Gableman’s profile and allowed him to spread falsehoods in Wisconsin and beyond for over a year,” Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, said in a phone interview Thursday.
Headline: WisPolitics, 8/13/2022
It is about time.
In December of 2021, during a bipartisan panel on election integrity, I stated that I hoped Mr. Gableman’s investigation would wrap up sooner rather than later, to give the legislature more time to make necessary statutory fixes and to restore voter confidence in our electoral system. His response was to take a taxpayer-subsidized trip to a partisan event in my district to attack me personally. Abraham Lincoln once said ‘better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.’ At that moment I lost all faith in his caliber as an investigator and his character as a man.
I’m sure Speaker Vos had his reasons for hiring Mr. Gableman in the first place. I applaud his decision now to fire him.Read the final paragraph of this statement (not included here), and you'll find she's just as bad as the rest of the GOP when it comes to voter suppression.
Headline: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8/12/2022
What other litigation is happening? In October, Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul sued Gableman on behalf of officials he has subpoenaed. Kaul has argued that Gableman is trying to exert authority he doesn’t have, such as by conducting interviews in private instead of before a legislative committee that the public can watch.
The lawsuits Kaul and Gableman brought touch on the same issues. The one Kaul brought is moving faster and could be resolved sooner.
Kaul’s case is being heard in Dane County, while Gableman’s is being heard in Waukesha County. However they go, either or both could be appealed. That would likely carry them into 2023. [emphasis added]
In addition, the liberal group American Oversight has filed three open records lawsuits against Vos and Gableman for failing to turn over documents about the review. They have won a series of favorable orders, including ones that found Vos in contempt of court and put more records into the public domain.
Related series of Vos-Gableman posts:
Related series of GOP 2020 election hysteria posts:
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