Public still paying for fraud probe records fights.

• Author: Lueders, Bill
• Position: 2020 United States presidential elections, Michael Gableman

Byline: Bill Lueders, Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Many people in Wisconsin are under the impression that the disastrous probe into the state's 2020 presidential election conducted by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman is over, as are its costs to taxpayers.

They're wrong.

The probe, conducted over 14 months by Gableman at the behest of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, failed to find any evidence of significant fraud. It did, however, reveal ample evidence of incompetence on the part of Gableman and his team, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), including multiple spelling errors. It also led to contempt charges against both Vos and Gableman, and to a judge's referral of Gableman to the office that regulates attorney conduct for his disgraceful behavior during a court proceeding.

Vos, whose name the OSC routinely rendered as "Voss," fired Gableman last August, after relations between the two had soured to where Gableman endorsed the speaker's GOP primary opponent. At the time, the cost of the probe and associated records battles was tallied at more than $1.1 million, all paid for with taxpayer dollars. Remarked state Sen. Melissa Agard (D-Madison): "I'm glad that Speaker Vos has stopped the bleeding for these tax dollars going to a sham investigation."

In fact, the bleeding never stopped. The amount paid by taxpayers now stands at more than $2 million, including nearly $1.5 million in legal fees, according to a report by WisPolitics.com; it could yet rise by hundreds of thousands more. That's in part because Vos and attorneys for OSC are continuing to drag out litigation over the four records-related lawsuits brought by American Oversight, a liberal watchdog group.

One case, involving contractors' records controlled by Vos, awaits resolution on various issues, including whether American Oversight can recover its in-house counsel fees. Vos is arguing, against logic and history, that attorneys who work for a group bringing a fight cannot recover their fees. A second case...