Cost of Vos/Gableman election probe keeps rising and Brewers deal Hader to Padres

The tab to taxpayers in the Gableman records cases grows by $163,000 after another judge imposes legal fees

• The price tag of a taxpayer-funded partisan review of the 2020 election continues to climb as another judge ordered the former Supreme Court justice leading the probe to cover attorneys fees for those who sued him to gain access to records related to the election review. Dane County Judge Frank Remington ruled that former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman was responsible for paying $163,000 in attorneys fees for American Oversight, a liberal group that has repeatedly sued Gableman and Assembly Republicans over request for records. The ruling comes just days after a separate Dane County judge ruled Gableman must cover nearly $100,000 worth of fees in a different lawsuit brought by the same group. In both cases, the money will come from taxpayers.

• The pair of rulings add to the bill taxpayers will cover for the review that Gableman began more than a year ago and used to push for the impossible and illegal effort to overturn the 2020 election results and to elevate his profile among supporters of former President Donald Trump. Those costs to taxpayers have eclipsed $1 million.

• The review, launched by Vos, has not revealed any evidence to question Joe Biden's victory over Trump in 2020 by about 21,000 votes.

Milwaukee Brewers trade closer Josh Hader to San Diego for four players

• In return, the Brewers got two players who can help now and two who can help the future. The "now" portion features Taylor Rogers, a left-hander who saved 28 games for the Padres, and right-hander Dinelson Lamet, a talented but oft-injured right-hander who will pitch out of the bullpen. The future portion of the deal includes outfielder Esteury Ruiz, a speedster who broke into the major leagues this year and might well wear a Brewers uniform before the season is over, and left-hander Robert Gasser, San Diego's second-round draft pick in 2021.

• "What I’d say is for the last three years, anytime you’d get into a trading season – whether it was the trade deadline or the Winter Meetings – we would have teams call us," president of baseball operations David Stearns said. "We have never made an outgoing call on Josh Hader, and that was true this deadline as well. But we have received many incoming calls, and that was true this deadline and as we always do, we listened. And in this case, we had a couple of very aggressive teams that pursued Josh and ultimately the San Diego deal was the one that was in the best interest of our organization."

• Balancing winning now while trying to remain competitive for the long term was a point Stearns repeatedly hammered home when discussing the ramifications of trading one of the game's top closers in the prime of his career as well as one of the franchise's most popular players. "These are difficult decisions," Stearns said. "We've done our best to determine how we can extend our window of competitiveness as long as possible, how we can avoid some of the deep downsides that certain organizations have experienced.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Cost of Vos/Gableman election probe keeps rising