On Friday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinelreported that Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has dismissed a number of subpoenas issued to local officials by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, two weeks after Vos fired him from his controversial position auditing the 2020 presidential election.
"Vos sent letters to the mayors of Madison and Green Bay and Wisconsin Elections Commission officials on Friday withdrawing subpoenas issued by Gableman ahead of a court hearing next week in the matter," reported Molly Beck.
"Vos hired Gableman last summer to review the 2020 election and gave him a budget of $676,000, a budget that he surpassed by hundreds of thousands of dollars. He took that step months after recounts and courts concluded Joe Biden had defeated Donald Trump in the state by about 21,000 votes," said the report. "Gableman was given more than $100,000 in salary over the course of the review that ultimately turned up no evidence of significant voter fraud."
While Gableman never managed to prove Trump's conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, he became infamous for his antics as part of the investigation, at one point trying to order the Waukesha County Sheriff to arrest the mayors of Green Bay and Madison because they hadn't responded to emails from his office that went into their spam folders. Even though his investigation confirmed Biden won the election legitimately, he still recommended "decertifying" the election, even though it had been more than a year since Biden took office and there is no legal process to decertify a state.
One of the strangest episodes of the saga came when a judge held Gableman in contempt of court for refusing to turn over records from his investigation to the watchdog group American Oversight. This led to a drama-packed court hearing in which Gableman threw a public tantrum at the judge and dared the court officers to arrest him — a stunt for which he now faces potential disbarment.
Just before being fired, Gableman threw his weight behind a primary challenge to Vos, which was also endorsed by Trump. Vos narrowly managed to survive this challenge.
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