Schimel to take ‘ expansive look’ at GAB

GOP Senate leaders authorized actions

State Attorney General Brad Schimel said he will be taking “a more expansive look into whether there were other illegal activities going on” at the nowdefunct Government Accountability Board.

Schimel made his comments about the old GAB during a television interview that aired Sunday on “Upfront With Mike Gousha.”

Last week, Republican state Senate leaders authorized Schimel to look into activities of the shuttered agency, including wide-ranging probes it conducted with prosecutors of Gov. Scott Walker and other Republicans.

The state Supreme Court shut down the investigation in 2015, finding nothing illegal had occurred.

In 2017, Schimel began investigating a leak of a trove of documents from the probe published by The Guardian U.S., and which were supposed to have remained secret.

Schimel recommended contempt proceedings against a prosecutor and eight other officials over their handling of material from the probe.

“The investigation we completed a couple of weeks ago was solely looking at trying to identify the source of the leak to the Guardian newspaper,” Schimel said. “So, we didn’t look at everything, we looked at what was necessary to follow through on trying to identify the person who caused that leak.

“We do think there’s the potential that there was other criminal activity besides just the leak, and we’ll look at that,” Schimel said.

Mark Thomsen, a Democrat and head of the state Elections Commission, defended the commission’s administrator, Michael Haas. Top Republican legislative leaders have called on Haas, who worked at the old GAB, to step down.

“There is no indication at all that Mr. Haas was in any way involved in any criminal activity,” Thomsen said. “When you take a public servant who does a great, great job, and who deserves a raise, and then you imply that he was involved with a crime, that is slander. That is the essence of false witness.”