Ex-Wisconsin judge’s election probe drags on as critics scoff

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February 7, 2022 10:18 am

By SCOTT BAUER – Associated Press

Posted: February 7, 2022 10:18 AM

Updated: February 7, 2022 10:36

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – The head of a sweeping, taxpayer-funded investigation into Joe Biden’s Wisconsin battleground victory sparked his political career in 2008 by unseating the state’s first black Supreme Court justice, capitalizing on an ad that sparked ethics complaints and allegations of racism.

Michael Gableman’s ad against then-Judge Louis Butler drew comparisons to the infamous Willie Horton ad from the 1988 presidential race and an official state Judiciary Commission complaint. But the announcement paid off as Gableman, then a little-known circuit judge in rural Wisconsin, became the first challenger to defeat a sitting judge in 40 years, tipping the court’s balance in favor of conservatives.

Gableman, 55, who left the High Court after serving a 10-year term, is now bringing the same deadly – ​​and, for his critics, factually challenged – approach to the election inquiry. Biden’s narrow 2020 victory in Wisconsin has withstood recounts, lawsuits and multiple criticisms. There is no evidence of widespread fraud.

In his seven-month investigation, Gableman was sued for his response to open-record requests and subpoenas and counter-sued. He has been criticized for his meager expense reports, ridiculed for sending confusing emails and making rudimentary errors in his documents and called to meet with conspiracy theorists.

Election experts and members of both parties dismissed Gableman as a partisan hack for claiming, even before he was appointed to lead the investigation, that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. He faced even more criticism for filling his investigative team with former Trump staffers or supporters.

A bipartisan group of Wisconsin business leaders wrote letters of support to struggling election officials in the state on Monday. Tom Florsheim, who signed the letter, said in an interview that Gableman was harassing and threatening election officials, which is bad for the state and the business climate.

Republican state Senator Kathy Bernier, a former election clerk who is retiring next year, called Gableman’s review a “charade” and said “no one should falsely accuse election officials of cheating.” . Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, also a Republican, called the Wisconsin investigation part of a nationwide disinformation campaign designed to “keep alive the lies of the 2020 election.”

“I don’t think he has a shred of credibility because he’s someone who has always had a cloud over him in public life,” said Sachin Chheda, a Democratic strategist who led the re-election campaign. Butler’s unsuccessful fight against Gableman 14 years ago.

Gableman said he was just looking for the truth. And his defenders say he has been unfairly criticized for years by political opponents seeking to discredit his work. Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who hired Gableman and handed him a $676,000 budget, backed him and defended his investigation.

Gableman did not respond to messages seeking comment. His lawyer, James Bopp, called him “very conscientious” and “very determined to follow the law as a judge, as a person, as a special advocate”.

“He considers it a very important responsibility. He would like to restore confidence in Wisconsin’s electoral process,” Bopp said.

Vos, the most powerful Republican in the state, hired Gableman last summer after Trump accused Vos of trying to stymie an election investigation. Gableman’s investigation has since become mired in a series of lawsuits challenging his subpoenas. A Nebraska-based voting machine company, ES&S, refused to comply, calling its subpoenas “the quintessential fishing expedition.”

Subpoenas have also been ridiculed for misspellings and incorrect names and for asking for data that cities don’t have.

The mayor of Green Bay has filed a lawsuit against Gableman, saying he should be forced to pay a fine and run a full-page ad in a newspaper to correct inaccuracies about how the mayor, an elected Democrat in the non-partisan ballot, responded to his subpoena.

Gableman is no stranger to controversy.

His 2008 campaign ad made it seem like Butler let convicted child molester Reuben Lee Mitchell out of jail early in a case he handled when he was a public defender. The ad showed a close-up of Butler and Mitchell, both black, onscreen at the same time.

He drew an immediate comparison to a political action committee television ad attacking Michael Dukakis during his 1988 campaign against George HW Bush. The ad featured a close-up of Horton, a black convicted killer who committed rape after being granted weekend furlough in Massachusetts when Dukakis was governor.

“Butler found a loophole. Mitchell then molested another child,” the narrator said in the Gableman commercial. But the announcement was misleading: Butler had won an appeal for Mitchell, but the state Supreme Court did not overturn his conviction. He committed another sexual offence, but only after being released on parole.

Gableman won the race, but the Wisconsin Judiciary Commission, a nonpartisan and independent agency, filed a lawsuit against Gableman saying he lied in the ad. The Supreme Court (with Gableman not participating) tied 3-3 on whether Gableman violated the code of judicial ethics, effectively clearing him, but even conservative justices who sided with Gableman called it the announcement of unpleasant.

“He ran a dishonest and racist campaign,” said Jim Doyle, the former governor who appointed Butler to the court. “It was just, ‘Let’s go find a black man who’s committed a horrible crime and somehow tie him to Louis Butler.’ … That’s how he did it. I never apologized.

With the political landscape favoring the Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections, Gableman chose not to seek re-election. His seat was filled by a Liberal candidate this spring of a year when Democrats swept all state offices in the fall.

Gableman kept a low profile after leaving court, but reappeared in November 2020 to speak at a rally of Trump supporters in Milwaukee, where he said the election was stolen.

Gableman further fueled his critics in October, telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he didn’t have a “full understanding of how elections work.”

And he only raised suspicions about his work by traveling to Arizona to observe the widely ridiculed account there; attend a symposium in South Dakota led by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell that included presentations from conspiracy theorists.

Doyle, the former Democratic governor and former attorney general, said he was stunned by the way Gableman conducted the investigation.

“It’s obviously totally amateurish,” said Doyle, an attorney who spent 12 years as Wisconsin’s top law enforcement official. “I don’t know how Republicans view it now, but after the way he’s led it, I bet they wish he was gone and all of this was gone.”

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