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A Dane County judge revoked the ability of five out-of-state attorneys to represent in court the Assembly Office of Special Counsel — which has spent more than a year conducting a review of the 2020 presidential election.
The judge, Frank Remington, wrote a scathing opinion in which he systematically refuted a number of false claims the attorneys had made while representing the office and its leader, the recently fired Michael Gableman. Remington wrote that because the five attorneys signed their names to motions which applied “phony legal principles to invented facts” the lawyers no longer have the ability to work on the case pro hac vice — a legal principle which allows attorneys not licensed in a state to practice in conjunction with a local attorney.
Among the attorneys Remington removed from the case is James Bopp, an Indiana-based lawyer who has been influential in Republican efforts to overturn the 2020 election and criminalize abortion.
The OSC attorneys had filed a motion seeking for Remington to recuse himself from the case because they claimed he favored American Oversight over them. Remington countered that the attorneys misrepresented or twisted the facts in order to try to show he was biased against Gableman’s review.
“Near every claim they make is frivolous under Wisconsin law,” Remington wrote. “When I granted pro hac vice admission, I did so upon the condition they obey the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s rules for professional conduct. Revocation of that admission is appropriate upon three factors, including an ‘unwillingness to abide by the rules of decorum.’ By filing this frivolous motion, these lawyers have met each of the three factors for revocation, and accordingly, their pro hac vice admissions are immediately withdrawn.”
Dane County Judge Frank Remington suggested on Aug. 16 that Michael Gableman’s review of the 2020 presidential election wasn’t “professional” enough to comply with open records requests. (Screenshot | WisEye)“The brief authored by those lawyers is a manifestation of incompetency,” he continued.
Remington issued a series of decisions on Wednesday relating to an open records lawsuit by the government watchdog group American Oversight. For months, the group has been fighting to get access to documents created by Gableman and the OSC as they conducted the review.
Along the way, both Gableman and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos were found in contempt of court. Vos started the review and hired Gableman last summer under pressure from former President Donald Trump. Vos fired Gableman last week after Gableman endorsed his primary opponent.
In a separate order issued Wednesday, Remington wrote that Gableman’s contempt order is no longer in effect and lifted the sanctions that had been issued against him.
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Aside from criticizing the work of the OSC attorneys, Remington wrote that the office appeared not to have accomplished much investigating as it spent more than $1 million during the year since it was established.
The open records case started when the OSC and Gableman refused to turn over hundreds of pages of documents, saying they were “strategic records” too important to the investigation to be released to the public.
Eventually, those documents were provided to Remington and American Oversight, but Remington noted that some of those pages hardly contained any information at all and if they were considered strategic, the review was a waste of time and taxpayer money. He also said that when the documents were provided, “it would come as no surprise if OSC had simply emptied its trash into my office.”
“So if OSC did not create strategic records, then what did OSC do with the resources given to it by the people of the State of Wisconsin?” Remington wrote. “From August 30 through December 4, 2021, the evidence speaks for itself. OSC accomplished nothing. It kept none of the weekly progress reports the Wisconsin State Assembly required it to keep. It recorded no interviews with witnesses. It gathered no measurable data. It organized no existing data into any analytical format. It generated no reports based on any special expertise.”
“It did commence lawsuits against other parts of our state and local government, although at time of this writing, OSC has received no relief,” he continued, alluding to lawsuits Gableman filed seeking testimony from local and state election officials. “Instead, it gave its employees code names like ‘coms’ or ‘3,’ apparently for the sole purpose of emailing back and forth about news articles and drafts of speeches. It printed copies of reports that better investigators had already written, although there is no evidence any person connected with OSC ever read these reports, let alone critically analyzed their factual and legal bases to draw his or her own principled conclusions.”
In a hearing on Tuesday, Remington said that Gableman’s unprofessionalism as he ran the OSC might mean that some questions regarding the review may go unanswered. In a statement following the Wednesday orders, American Oversight said that the actions of Gableman and Vos showed a disregard for the state’s public record laws but that following the law matters.
“Today, the court confirmed that Speaker Vos’s partisan inquiry into the 2020 election ‘accomplished nothing’ except to waste taxpayer resources promoting dangerously false claims of voter fraud,” American Oversight Executive Director Heather Sawyer said in a statement. “The individuals behind this inquiry concealed a mountain of evidence about what they were doing and who was involved. Their disregard for Wisconsin’s public records law means that the people of Wisconsin will never know the full extent of their misconduct.”
“By removing OSC’s lawyers for making ‘repeated false statements of fact and law’ and refusing to abide by Wisconsin rules of professional conduct, the court affirms that truth and the rule of law matter,” she continued.
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Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.
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Fulton County District had harsh words for an attorney representing Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp as he tries to quash a subpoena to appear before a special grand jury.
Attorney Brian F. McEvoy filed a 121-page motion in Fulton County Superior Court on Wednesday seeking to negate or delay the subpoena.
An email from Willis in the one-hundred-plus pages of attachments, Atlanta Journal-Constitution correspondent Greg Bluestein reported.
"Fulton County DA Fani Willis isn’t messing around," Bluestein noted.
Willis began the email by writing, "my special counsel, in an effort to be a gentleman and an officer of the court, has been far too polite."
"The email you have sent is offensive and beneath an officer of the court," Willis wrote. "You are both wrong and confused."
"Let's discuss some of the ways you are wrong," she continued, listing three bullet points.
"Now let's discuss your confusion," Willis said, listing two bullet points.
"We have been working with you in good faith for months," she explained. "You have been rude and even disparaging to my staff. You have been less than honest about conversations that have taken place. Despite the way you have behaved, we have continued to work with you out of deference not for you, but out of deference for my governor. This is an old adage that people take kindness for weakness. You have taken my kindness as weakness and you have continually treated with disdain."
"Despite your disdain, this investigation continues and will not be derailed by anyone's antics," Willis wrote.
ALSO IN THE NEWS: Trump raising 'cash bonanza' with 'firehose of emails' attacking FBI: report
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On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that former President Donald Trump is raising millions off a deluge of fundraising emails attacking the FBI for the search executed at his Mar-a-Lago country club in Palm Beach, Florida.
"Contributions to Trump’s political action committee topped $1 million on at least two days after the Aug. 8 search of his Palm Beach, Fla., estate, according to two people familiar with the figures," reported Josh Dawsey and Isaac Arnsdorf. "The daily hauls jumped from a level of $200,000 to $300,000 that had been typical in recent months, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic information."
"The cash bonanza also provides a concrete sign that Trump is reaping some political benefits from the revelation that he is under investigation by the Justice Department for potential violations of laws including the Espionage Act," said the report. "Trump and his supporters have repeatedly boasted in emails, social media posts and right-wing media articles that the search warrant would backfire on President Biden and rally Republicans around Trump. The search prompted sympathetic statements from politicians such as Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and former vice president Mike Pence, who are not reflexively full-throated in defending Trump."
Reports indicate that the FBI was searching for top secret nuclear weapons information among the documents at Mar-a-Lago, and experts have suggested the former president is in serious legal jeopardy — but Trump is responding by amping up the attacks on federal agents.
"The fire hose of Trump fundraising emails referencing the Mar-a-Lago search exceeded the PAC’s average pace of about nine per day," said the report. "The messages used alarming phrases in bold and all-caps such as 'THEY BROKE INTO MY HOME,' 'They’re coming after YOU,' and 'THIS IS INSANE.' One message included a poll asking, 'Do you agree that President Trump is being politically persecuted?' Another promised 'an exclusive 1300% MATCH today only!,' a common tactic used to encourage people to respond immediately."
The aspersions on federal law enforcement have been accompanied by new incidents of threats and violence against the FBI. A man who participated in the January 6 Capitol attack was killed by police after trying to shoot his way into the FBI field office in Cincinnati, Ohio with a semiautomatic rifle and a nail gun. And a Pennsylvania man was charged after writing on the far-right social network Gab, "I already know I’m going to die at the hands of these piece of s--- child molesting law enforcement scumbags. My only goal is to kill more of them before I drop. I will not spend one second of my life in their custody.”
ALSO IN THE NEWS: DOJ issues another subpoena — and thinks J6 Committee has evidence a crime was committed: report
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