Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) withdrew subpoenas that had been issued as part of ousted special counsel Michael Gableman‘s controversial 2020 election investigation.
Following months of controversy and court squabbles, Vos fired Gableman from the 2020 inquiry earlier this month, but a slew of subpoenas against state and city officials by Gableman had been left in place. The move by Vos, who initially hired Gableman for the job, effectively ends the 14-month-long inquiry.
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“The last part of the investigation was seeking compliance with the subpoenas, and now they’ve been withdrawn, so the investigation is over,” Gableman’s attorney, James Bopp, told the Associated Press.
Last year, Gableman subpoenaed officials from several Badger State cities, demanding records about election practices. This included Green Bay, Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, and Kenosha. He was particularly interested in their acceptance of funding to bolster their election procedures from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which is affiliated with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“Speaker Vos has finally recognized that this cynical and divisive exercise should be ended,” Madison City Attorney Michael Haas said in a statement Friday, per Madison.com. “The voters and the public should observe and ask questions about our elections, but they can also have full confidence in the security and integrity of Wisconsin elections.”
In addition to the subpoenas against city officials, Vos also scrapped subpoenas Gableman issued against the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The withdrawals took place on Aug. 26.
NEW: The Waukesha Co. lawsuit, where Michael Gableman asked a judge to consider jailing Wisconsin mayors who didn’t answer questions at his Brookfield office, has been dismissed. pic.twitter.com/RSt3Ixmbo9
— A.J. Bayatpour (@AJBayatpour) August 29, 2022
In response to grumblings from former President Donald Trump and his supporters that election malfeasance in Wisconsin and other states deprived him of victory in 2020, Vos hired Gableman, a former state Supreme Court justice, to review the matter. Election officials and the courts have roundly rejected such claims.
Gableman quickly became engrossed in a slew of controversies, ranging from contentious legal tiffs over his alleged failure to comply with public records requests to scrutiny over his election findings. Gableman’s review has cost taxpayers upward of $1 million.
Vos had long refrained from cutting Gableman loose despite facing fierce public criticism and being found in contempt of court in March for Gableman’s failure to produce documents in keeping with public records requests. In May, he halted Gableman’s investigation due to legal disputes over the records requests but allowed Gableman to retain half of his monthly salary during the pause.
Gableman then endorsed Vos’s primary opponent, Adam Steen, and recorded robocalls for Steen, asserting that his 2020 inquiry advanced “in spite of” Vos. After Vos narrowly fended off the primary challenge, he denounced Gableman as an “embarrassment” and huddled with the state Assembly to fire him.
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At least four open records cases brought by the watchdog group American Oversight were pending against Gableman as of early August. In court, Gableman has admitted to destroying records he deemed unnecessary to his investigation.
Gableman released multiple reports detailing alleged instances of wrongdoing in the election. The so-called Zuck Bucks had been a key focus of his in the reports and served as the basis for his calls to decertify the state’s 2020 election results. The Wisconsin Elections Commission has fiercely disputed Gableman’s claims, arguing his reports were rife with mischaracterizations about the election.
