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MADISON, Wis. (CN) — Wisconsin state regulators filed a disciplinary complaint Tuesday against a former state Supreme Court justice — and staunch 2020 election denier — over his conduct while serving as special counsel to the Wisconsin Assembly.
Michael Gableman, a vocal ally of President-elect Donald Trump, was hired in 2021 as special counsel to the Assembly to head up one of four investigations into the results of the 2020 election.
The appointment came one day after Trump criticized Wisconsin Republicans for not doing more to overturn the election’s results, a race he still has not conceded four years later.
Gableman signed a contract with Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to represent the Assembly and conduct a fact-finding investigation on legislative changes that could be enacted for the administration of future elections. However, Gableman has since testified that he did not take that objective seriously — and intended from the beginning to find a way to decertify the election results in Wisconsin, according to the Office of Lawyer Regulation.
The office says in its complaint in Wisconsin Supreme Court that Gabelman violated the high court’s professional conduct rules for attorneys 10 times, from the time he agreed to represent the Assembly with a personal agenda in mind to his false affidavit to the Office of Lawyer Regulation during its investigation into his conduct.
Originally, the Assembly gave Gableman four months to compose a report outlining legislative options. The agreement stated that he would be responsible for any costs incurred over that period and would be paid $11,000 per month.
However, almost immediately after signing, an amendment allocated to Gableman a budget of over $600,000 and an additional month of time to complete the report.
When the report still wasn’t finished five months later, Gableman got another extension, and the hefty bill ticked up.
Vos fired Gableman in late 2022 after he endorsed Vos’s challenger in that year’s primary election. In his yearlong tenure, the Assembly paid Gableman $117,394 and spent $2.3 million in expenses for rent, travel, consultants, outside lawyers and court fines and penalties, according to the Office of Lawyer Regulation.
Though Vos never asked him to find a way to decertify the results of the 2020 election, Gableman took it upon himself to include a “decertification appendix” in his final report, the regulatory office says.
The complaint quotes Gableman as saying, “When we were writing our report, I got sick and tired of Vos running around the state and telling people that the Legislature did not have the power to decertify the election … and I was really upset I wasn’t gonna let him get away with another lie.”
While running the Office of Special Counsel, Gableman also violated open records laws and threatened to jail the mayors of Madison and Green Bay, claiming they had refused to comply with his subpoena — a fact Gableman’s own emails disprove, the Office of Lawyer Regulation says.
President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Wisconsin by just 20,000 votes held up against two recounts, multiple lawsuits, a nonpartisan audit and a review by a Republican law firm. Officials agree there is no evidence of widespread fraud in the state.
Gableman’s conspiracy claims centered on $8.8 million in grants provided by the Center for Tech and Civic Life, an organization run by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Pricilla Chan. A bulk of that cash went to aiding election administration in Wisconsin’s largest, and most liberal, areas. Gableman claimed in his report that the grant money was used essentially to bribe Black voters to cast their ballots for Biden.
The Office of Lawyer Regulation also accuses Gableman of lying under oath, both at a lower court in Waukesha County and to an Assembly committee; disobeying an order by Judge Frank Remington and disrupting proceedings related to his office’s failure to comply with open records laws; making false and demeaning statements about opposing counsel and Remington in the same trial; breaking attorney-client confidentiality; and making a false statement to the Office of Lawyer Regulation claiming that he “did engage in the practice of law” while serving as special counsel.
Gableman has 20 days to respond to the complaint.
The Office of Lawyer Regulation declined to comment on the complaint.
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