Vos hires former Wis. Supreme Court justice for election review
WISCONSIN DELLS - Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is hiring a former conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justice to oversee the speaker’s review of the results of the 2020 election.
Vos announced the hire of former justice Michael Gableman at the state Republican convention in Wisconsin Dells, though Gableman argued the review “is not a partisan effort.”
“What we’re after is fairness and honesty,” he said.
Following confirmation of President Joe Biden’s victory in the Nov. 3 election, Gableman said the presidency was stolen.
“I don’t think anyone here can think of anything more systematically unjust than a stolen election,” Gableman told a crowd at a pro-Trump rally staged Nov. 7 in a parking lot at American Serb Hall in Milwaukee.
The announcement came about 15 hours after former President Donald Trump released a statement blasting Vos and other Republican legislative leaders, claiming the group was engaging in a “cover up” of election corruption.
Vos is launching a new review of the 2020 election by hiring retired police officers at a cost of nearly $20,000 so far at taxpayer expense to investigate the results of the presidential election that have been under scrutiny by Republicans after Trump falsely claimed massive voter fraud led to his loss.
Under two contracts Vos signed in recent weeks, the officers will investigate potential “illegalities” and leads brought forward by an earlier review by the Assembly’s elections committee or through media reports. The contracts require the findings be “confidential.”
Vos signed one three-month contract with former Milwaukee police Detective Mike Sandvick for $3,200 per month on June 16. A second contract with former Eau Claire police Detective Sgt. Steven Page was signed by Vos on Wednesday for the same amount and terms.
Vos has said he plans to hire a third person to conduct the three-month investigation. He did not say Saturday how much Gableman will be paid.
Gableman has been largely out of the public eye since opting not to run for another term on the state’s highest court in 2018.
He reliably voted with conservatives during his nine years on the court. He was in the majority in a pair of 2014 cases that upheld Wisconsin’s voter ID law.
He wrote the lead opinion that upheld Act 10, the 2011 law that all but eliminated collective bargaining for public workers.
Gableman was also the lead author of a 2015 decision that ended a John Doe investigation into then-GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign. Prosecutors argued Gableman and then-Justice David Prosser should not have participated in the case because their campaigns benefited from spending by conservative groups that were being investigated.
As a Burnett County circuit judge, Gableman in 2008 unseated Justice Louis Butler, becoming the first candidate to defeat a sitting justice in more than four decades.
Almost immediately, he faced charges from the state’s Judicial Commission, which concluded he had lied in a campaign ad that described a case Butler handled as a public defender. The state Supreme Court split 3-3 in 2010 on whether Gableman had violated ethical rules for judges with the ad.
The matter spurred more controversy when the law firm Michael Best & Friedrich revealed it had not required Gableman to pay for the firm’s legal defense of him in the ethics case.