FILE — Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, an investigator hired by Republicans to look into former President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss in the battleground state, who refused to answer questions from Circuit Court Judge Frank Remington, leaves the stand, on Friday, June 10, 2022, at the Dane County Courthouse in Madison, Wis. (Amber Arnold/Wisconsin State Journal via AP, File).
Legal regulatory authorities in Wisconsin on Tuesday filed a disciplinary complaint against a former state supreme court justice who criticized the Badger State’s 2020 election procedures.
Michael Gableman, a Republican, was hired by Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, also a Republican, in 2021 to lead one of many investigations into the integrity of the 2020 presidential election and provide recommendations for how to make future elections better.
In the end, Gableman was unceremoniously sacked by Vos himself after calling for the elected official’s ouster in a primary challenge – and because his investigation, while sporting a hefty price tag, found “absolutely no evidence” of voter fraud and produced little of value.
“Here, I guess what we found out from this long and tortuous road is that at least for the first part of this investigation, there was no actual work being done,” then-Dane County judge Valerie Bailey–Rihn said during a hearing in July 2022. “The taxpayers are paying $11,000 for somebody to sit in a New Berlin library to learn about election law because they had no experience in election law.”
While fizzled out investigations and lackluster reports are beyond the agency’s mandate, regulators say Gableman repeatedly violated professional rules of conduct incumbent on all Wisconsin attorneys in order to secure his own position, during the inquiry, and then again during a subsequent investigation into the failed quest to find fraud.
Chief among those alleged violations are a series of “false statements” the onetime jurist made in petitions that aimed to force the mayors of Green Bay and Madison to respond to subpoenas.
“These petitions contained false statements and failed to inform the tribunal of material facts known to Gableman that would enable the tribunal to make an informed decision,” the charging document reads.
Later, when the mayors did respond to those subpoenas, Gableman allegedly “made false statements about the responses.”
As Law&Crime previously reported, Gableman earlier found himself in hot water for a series of courtroom outbursts after flouting a court order to respond to open records requests.
During the June 2022 hearing, the ex-justice was accused by a sitting judge of disrupting court proceedings by disparaging the court and by making “misogynistic” comments about a female attorney. That incident was the original basis for the referral to Wisconsin’s Office of Lawyer Regulation – and is cited among the charges.
In sum, Gableman is accused of 10 separate violations.
Another point of contention for regulators was the circumstance in which Gableman accepted his position of special counsel to the legislature. To hear the regulators tell it, the former jurist was never really on board with the goal of shoring up the electoral system. Rather, the filing says, Gableman was intent on advancing an agenda in line with the false claim the 2020 election was somehow stolen.
From the charging document at length:
Vos defined the objective as gathering facts about how recent elections in Wisconsin had been administered, and to suggest possible legislative changes for the Assembly to consider.
Vos made clear the objective was prospective, meaning it was to assist the Assembly in determining what legislative changes, if any, were needed in the elections administration of future elections/
Significantly, Vos’s stated objective did not include (1) supporting an effort to overturn the 2020 Presidential elections results; (2) determining whether the election was “stolen;” (3) analyzing whether it was possible to decertify the Wisconsin Electors; or (4) holding officials accountable for prior actions in administering elections.
“Despite Vos’s clear, unambiguous instruction that the objective of the investigation was to find facts useful for the Assembly’s consideration of prospective legislative changes to election administration, Gableman included in his report an appendix setting forth his legal opinion that the legislature could ‘decertify’ results of the 2020 Wisconsin General Election for President, in which Joseph Biden had been declared the winner,” the complaint goes on. “This was contrary to the agreed-upon objective of the representation.”
Investigators also allege Gableman made “multiple demonstrably false statements” during the regulatory inquiry by averring his “responsibilities did not include giving legal advice.”
“Gableman did give legal advice,” the complaint alleges.
Read the full 75-page document here.
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