MADISON – In a dramatic turnaround, an attorney reviewing the 2020 election for Assembly Republicans on Thursday canceled interviews with mayors and city clerks and backed off on subpoenas he issued to them days ago.
Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman over the last week demanded the officials give him every election record they have and sit for interviews with him this month. The request comprised hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of pages of records.
On Thursday, Gableman reversed course and said the officials for now do not need to come in for interviews and could simply provide him with copies of records they have already made available to others under the state’s open records law.
Gableman may later ask for additional records, according to his aide, Zakory Niemierowicz.
Interviews with mayors and city clerks could be scheduled later if needed, according to Michael Haas, the city attorney for Madison. Haas said the same information had been provided by Gableman’s office to the five cities that have received subpoenas from Gableman.
“I think they did not appreciate the volume of documents that were being requested,” Haas said.
Robin Vos hired Michael Gableman with taxpayer-funded budget to review the 2020 election
Joe Biden won Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes, or 0.6 points. Recounts and court rulings have confirmed his victory over Donald Trump.
Despite those findings, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester hired Gableman to review the election. He gave him a taxpayer-funded budget of about $680,000.
Vos — who authorized the subpoenas — did not immediately say Thursday whether he agreed with Gableman’s decision to relent for the moment.
Gableman last year claimed without evidence the election was stolen. This week, he said election laws are not intuitive and he does not know how elections work.
He has expressed grand ambitions with his review so he could compare how the election was conducted with how it was supposed to be conducted. He was to be done with his work by the end of October but this week said that deadline was unrealistic.
Gableman’s team provides conflicting information, lack of transparency
Niemierowicz said Gableman started out by issuing subpoenas because he wanted to ensure everyone would cooperate with him.
“Some parties were unwilling to cooperate when we called,” he claimed at first.
That’s not in keeping with what election officials have said. Niemierowicz declined to name anyone who had resisted cooperating — and then raised the prospect that no one had done so.
“There may or may not have been” people who declined to cooperate, Niemierowicz said. “Our contacts with people throughout the investigation are classified at the moment.”
When asked why Gableman had asked for so much initially, Niemierowicz hung up. He did not respond to a voice message.
Subpoenas sought every record from election in five Wisconsin cities
The subpoenas — the first to be issued by the Wisconsin Legislature in about 50 years — were served on Meagan Wolfe, the director of the state Elections Commission, and the mayors and top election officials in Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Racine and Kenosha.
They sought every record they possessed regarding the 2020 election. In an attachment to the subpoenas, Gableman put a focus on records related to grants the cities received from the Center for Tech and Civic Life to help run their elections in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
The nonprofit center used funds provided by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.
More than $10 million was provided to more than 200 Wisconsin municipalities, with the bulk of it going to the state’s most populous cities. That frustrated Republicans because so many Democrats live in those areas.
Courts have found the cities were allowed to accept the donations.
Gableman planned to interview the election officials on Oct. 15 and the mayors on Oct. 22 at an office in Brookfield. Gableman indicated he would conduct the interviews in private but faced criticism from the left and right for not allowing the public to observe them.
“Well, I guess I’ll be canceling my trip to Brookfield,” tweeted Rep. Mark Spreitzer, a Beloit Democrat who sits on the Assembly Elections Committee.
Contact Patrick Marley at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @patrickdmarley.
