MADISON, Wis. — The Republican-led review of Wisconsin’s 2020 elections ended abruptly Friday when the GOP Assembly speaker who launched the probe last summer fired the former state Supreme Court justice he had hired to lead it. The firing came a week after Michael Gableman, who had led the investigation, joined former President Donald Trump in turning against Chairman Robin Vos. amid the veteran Wisconsin politician’s effort to fend off a primary challenge from the right. The random, chronic research it was marked by meetings with conspiracy theorists, violations of state public records laws and Gableman’s call to investigate the legally impossible task of certifying election results. It revealed no evidence of widespread fraud, although Trump and Gableman have tried to suggest otherwise. “After several members of our caucus have contacted me over the past few days, it is clear to me that we have only one option in this matter, and that is to close the Office of the Special Counsel,” Voss said in a written statement. . statement. Voss had a close relationship with Trump, who supported Wisconsin’s overhaul but repeatedly pressed Voss to go further. Last week, Trump and Gableman endorsed the longtime speaker’s Republican primary opponent, with the former president holding a rally urging voters to oust Vos. Vos won Tuesday’s primary over Adam Steen, but just barely, claiming 51 percent of the vote. Steen had called for the election to be ratified and called Voss, one of the most powerful Republicans in Wisconsin, a traitor. The gunfire marked the end of a saga that began inside June 2021 when Voss, acting under pressure from Trump, announced at the state Republican Party’s annual convention that he had hired Gableman. The retired judge had earlier claimed without evidence that the election was rigged. It took Gableman months to set up his office, and he spent the initial stage of his review doing online research from a public library in suburban Milwaukee. He toured the site of an often-criticized GOP-led ballot review in Arizona and attended a seminar in South Dakota hosted by Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, which has made false claims about the 2020 election. As he continued his review, Gableman claimed he was acting in a nonpartisan manner while attending GOP events and calling for the resignation of a Republican senator who had slammed his criticism as a travesty. Gableman criticized the way the nonpartisan state elections director dresses and monitors other people’s social media posts. He or one of his aides drafted a memo suggesting that a city employee in Milwaukee was a Democrat because she had a nose ring, liked snakes and lived with her boyfriend. Gableman issued a report in March urging lawmakers to consider recalling the state’s 10 electoral votes for Joe Biden, who beat Trump in Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes. Vos had long opposed the idea because election experts — including Gableman’s own attorney, James Bopp Jr. – found that there is no way to legally perform this duty. Gableman acknowledged his proposal was a “practical impossibility” two weeks later in a private memo to Vos that came to light this month. Vos forced Gableman to reimburse taxpayers for the cost of his trip to a party event, but publicly tolerated much of Gableman’s approach to the overhaul. That changed after Gableman endorsed Steen and hung up on a robocall saying Vos “never wanted a real investigation.” Gableman went further in an appearance Monday on former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast, arguing that Voss had a role in stealing the 2020 election. reviews found no signs of significant voter fraud.) “[Vos] he oversaw the implementation of the entire despicable machinery that the Wisconsin Board of Elections used to steal the election from — and I’m not even going to say from a particular candidate. I will say that they stole it from the voters and the good citizens of the state of Wisconsin,” Gableman said. Gableman said Vos feared public criticism if he challenged the state’s election system more forcefully, and claimed Vos had told him he wanted to downplay election issues. “What he told me was that he didn’t think the issue of election integrity would be a successful political platform for either him or other Republicans, and so he wanted to minimize all discussion and all behavior about it before the [2022] election,” Gableman said. Through his research, Gableman found little information that was new. The reports he wrote mostly echoed the findings of conservative groups that criticized the way the election was conducted during the coronavirus pandemic. Vos initially gave Gableman a taxpayer-funded budget of $676,000, but Vos and Gableman quickly outgrew that as their legal bills mounted. The two lost a string of rulings and were found in contempt of court after the liberal watchdog group American Oversight sued them under the state’s open records law. Vos telegraphed Gableman’s firing after clinching his primary victory, telling reporters Tuesday night, “It’s an embarrassment to the state.”
