Taxpayers' bill for the shuttered Michael Gableman election review keeps growing. Here is the latest and what we know so far.
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Wisconsin taxpayers' cost for the fruitless partisan review of the 2020 presidential election continues to grow.
Dane County Circuit Court Judge Diane Schipper has ordered Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to pay $135,574 in legal fees to the liberal watchdog group American Oversight for the group's successful lawsuit to obtain records from former Justice Michael Gableman's 14-month probe, bringing the taxpayer-paid cost to the Gableman review to nearly $2.5 million, according to a WisPolitics review.
The Washington, D.C.-based group can recover up to $7,637 for its most recent fees and costs, but Vos has seven days to file any objections to the remainder, according to Schipper's ruling on Feb. 23.
The money will come from taxpayers.
Speaker Robin Vos plans to appeal the latest ruling
Vos said he would likely appeal the order.
“How surprising that a liberal Dane County judge would agree with a liberal organization funded by unions and liberal activists,” Vos said. “I’m sure we’ll end up appealing that because (the fees) are outrageous.”
In the lawsuit, Vos argued that no fees should be awarded to a non-profit corporation like American Oversight because of statutes in Illinois and Ohio, or, alternatively, that if fees must be awarded, that American Oversight’s fees should be reduced.
"Wisconsin’s public records law is not ambiguous and its interpretation requires no assistance from Illinois or Ohio courts," Schipper ruled. "I reject Vos’ invitation to apply those states’ laws, and under Wisconsin law, I award American Oversight its reasonable fees using the lodestar approach. This is a two-step approach in which courts first determine the number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate."
Another judge also ruled against Vos and Gableman
In March 2022, Dane County Judge Frank Remington ruled Vos and Gableman violated the state's public records law by refusing to turn over some documents to American Oversight in a separate case and delaying the release of others. That judge held Gableman in contempt of court after he berated Remington and a female attorney while refusing to answer questions about his handling of public records requests.
What was Gableman paid to conduct his review?
Gableman drew $11,000 a month to conduct the review when it was launched in the summer of 2021. About a year later Vos reduced the pay to $5,500 a month.
Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes. Recounts, court rulings, an independent audit and a study by a conservative group confirmed his win, but Vos moved ahead with the Gableman review, announcing it during the 2021 state Republican Party convention at a time Trump and other Republicans were pushing for more to be done to scrutinize the election in Wisconsin.
Vos fired Gableman in August last year. Gableman, whose work revealed no evidence of significant voter fraud and turned up little about voting in Wisconsin that wasn't already known, had by that time turned on Vos, backing a primary challenger to the speaker in 2022.
Michael Maistelman, a Milwaukee attorney who specializes in campaign finance, said Wisconsin taxpayers are paying millions of dollars based on a lie Donald Trump perpetuated.
"It's a political stunt made even worse because a guy that sat on the highest court of Wisconsin was inept. He didn't even know how to follow the law and now we're paying for it," Maistelman said. "Even the guy that hired him eventually called him out and finally admitted that."
Molly Beck of the Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.
Corrinne Hess can be reached at chess@gannett.com or on Twitter @corrihess
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Vos ordered to pay more than $135K in legal fees for Gableman records
