Green Bay refuses to give GOP private information
MADISON – An attorney for Green Bay refused Thursday to provide Assembly Republicans with private information about voters and questioned their ability to legally continue their review of the 2020 election.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos last summer hired former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman to look into the election at a cost of $676,000 to taxpayers. Gableman’s contract expired at the end of December, but Vos has said he has asked him to continue his work for the Assembly Elections Committee.
Daniel Lenz, an attorney for Green Bay, told Gableman in a letter Thursday that any extension of his contract needs to be done in writing, not verbally.
“Whatever the status of those negotiations may be, it appears that you may no longer have any authority to act on behalf of the Committee as Special Counsel,” Lenz wrote in the letter.
“It is not clear whether you currently are an appointed agent, attorney, or counsel for the Wisconsin State Assembly or otherwise a person authorized to act on behalf of the Committee,” he added.
Gableman and a spokesman for Vos did not immediately respond Thursday to questions about the status of Gableman’s contract or how they would respond to Lenz’s letter.
Recounts and courts have confirmed Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by about 21,000 votes in Wisconsin. A nonpartisan legislative audit and a study by a conservative group found no evidence of significant voter fraud.
Republicans have contended further examination of the election is needed so they can consider making changes to the state’s voting laws. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers last year vetoed a string of election bills they passed.
Three days before his contract expired, Gableman last month issued a new round of subpoenas to officials in Green Bay and four other cities, as well as the Democratic chairwoman of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission.
In response, Lenz on Thursday provided Gableman with nearly 1,600 pages of documents after providing about 20,000 pages of documents in the fall.
Lenz noted that some information Gableman sought in December had already been provided to him.
“Unfortunately, it appears that during your time as Special Counsel, neither you nor anyone in your office has reviewed these documents, as a number of the items requested in the December
Subpoenas are among those the City already produced months ago,” he wrote.
Green Bay denies access to voter birth dates, SSNs
Lenz told Gableman the city would not provide him with personal information about voters, such as birth dates and Social Security numbers because of privacy concerns. Gableman and Vos have asked for “any and all information about individual voters” stored on government computers but have not said why they want that information.
Likewise, Green Bay will not provide Gableman with the election equipment source code he and Vos have asked for because doing so “would jeopardize the safety and security of future elections,” Lenz wrote. He noted state law requires such information to remain confidential.
Lenz said the city was providing some information to Gableman as a courtesy but called the subpoenas overly broad. He wrote that it would take Green Bay’s information services department as much as two months to conduct searches for all the data Gableman is seeking.
Lenz noted the subpoenas contained errors and asked for some information the city does not possess. For example, Gableman asked five cities for their communications with Dominion Voting Systems even though none of them use that firm’s voting machines.
The letter from Green Bay is the latest sign the city is willing to take an aggressive posture with Gableman. The city’s attorneys have asked a Waukesha County judge to sanction Gableman because they say he has mischaracterized how Mayor Eric Genrich has responded to the review.
Gableman is seeking to have Genrich and Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway jailed if they won’t sit for interviews with him. The two have called the effort ridiculous because they say they have cooperated with him.
Officials in Milwaukee and Kenosha said they planned to provide Gableman with some of the information he is seeking on Thursday. Gableman gave Madison an extension until Friday to respond to one of its subpoenas.
Officials in Racine did not immediately say how they planned to respond to Gableman’s request to provide him with information on Thursday.
A Dane County judge this week declined for now to block subpoenas Gableman issued to state election officials. The judge said she would consider the matter again if Gableman seeks to force Meagan Wolfe, the nonpartisan director of the state Elections Commission, to testify in secret.