Mayor: Make Gableman admit falsehoods
Green Bay’s Genrich asks judge to require ads
MADISON - A lawyer for Green Bay’s mayor asked a judge to force former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman to take out full-page newspaper ads for mischaracterizing how the mayor has responded to Gableman’s partisan review of the 2020 election.
The move Tuesday comes amid a legal tussle over Republican efforts to reexamine a presidential election that Joe Biden won by about 21,000 votes. State and federal courts have upheld his victory over Donald Trump.
Gableman, who is overseeing the review for Assembly Republicans, in November sued Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich and Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway. He alleged they have not cooperated with his inquiry and asked a judge to jail them if they don’t agree to interviews with him.
Genrich and Rhodes-Conway called the lawsuit ridiculous, saying they had cooperated with him. On Tuesday, Green Bay’s attorney asked Waukesha County Circuit Judge Ralph Ramirez to punish Gableman for how he has described Genrich’s conduct.
The attorney, Jeffrey Mandell, asked the judge to require Gableman to publish full-page ads in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Green Bay Press-Gazette and Wisconsin State Journal that acknowledge he had made inaccurate statements to an Assembly committee about how Genrich has responded to the election review.
In addition, he asked Ramirez to order Gableman to tell the Assembly committee that he had wrongly said that
Genrich had violated his legal obligations. Mandell also wants Ramirez to require Gableman to pay fines and take a class on legal ethics.
Not to be outdone, Gableman has also threatened to seek sanctions against Mandell. Kevin Scott, an attorney for Gableman, last month argued Mandell should face discipline if he didn’t withdraw a letter that Scott contends mischaracterized state law. Scott argued Mandell’s letter was meant to cause unnecessary delay.
Mandell has not withdrawn the letter. So far, Scott has not formally asked
for sanctions against Mandell.
Gableman did not immediately respond to questions Tuesday about the filing seeking him to take out newspaper ads.
Gableman in October subpoenaed mayors and election officials but soon afterward agreed to put off his interviews with them.
In his lawsuit, Gableman contends Genrich and Rhodes-Conway were supposed to sit for depositions on Nov. 15. The mayors dispute that, saying Gableman’s team had indefinitely postponed those interviews.
Before that date, attorneys for Green Bay and Madison told Gableman’s team their understanding of where deposition plans stood. Gableman did not disagree with them at the time, they said.
In addition, Mandell argues Gableman filed the wrong type of case in the wrong court. Gableman brought his lawsuit in Waukesha County, where he is based, rather than the home counties of Genrich or Rhodes-Conway.
The extent of Gableman’s powers is being challenged in a separate lawsuit brought by Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul. Kaul, who represents the state’s bipartisan Elections Commission, argues Gableman can’t interview officials behind closed doors, as he plans.
Dane County Circuit Judge Rhonda Lanford has said she will issue a decision in the case by Monday.
Assembly Republicans over the summer hired Gableman and gave him a taxpayer-funded budget of $676,000. He was initially supposed to complete his work in the fall, but Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester later extended his deadline to the end of 2021.
More recently, Vos has said Gableman’s work could continue into the spring. Gableman’s contract was to expire at the end of December and Vos has not said if he has offered him a new contract.
Gableman last week issued a new round of subpoenas, which suggests he plans to continue his work for weeks or months.
Gableman has hired and met with election conspiracy theorists as part of his review. Before he was hired by Vos, Gableman at a pro-Trump rally argued without evidence that bureaucrats had stolen the 2020 election in Wisconsin.
Vos to testify
The election review has spawned a series of open records lawsuits by the liberal group American Oversight as it seeks documents about the Republicans’ work.
Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn said Tuesday she would allow the group to question Vos under oath about how he has decided when to make records public.
An attorney for Vos argued the group couldn’t use its open records lawsuit to force the speaker to testify.
Bailey-Rihn rejected that argument and said she would allow American Oversight to question Vos and his counsel, Steve Fawcett. That will help the group determine whether any records were withheld that should have been released.
“To me, that’s the truth we’re searching for — whether or not there are records that exist or not,” Bailey-Rihn said. “Why have the strong policy of open government and open public records if, to get around it, all you can say is they don’t exist and no one can ask any further. That just doesn’t make any sense.”
The depositions are scheduled for Jan. 12. They are to be conducted privately but transcripts of them could be made public later.
Vos and other Republicans have released some records about their secretive review of the election but held back others. American Oversight has filed three lawsuits to try to obtain documents about their work.
American Oversight has maintained that Vos has not produced some records that Bailey-Rihn has ordered him to turn over. The group has asked the judge in one of its other cases to find Vos in contempt of court and fine him, but Bailey-Rihn has declined to do that so far.
The depositions will help determine how thoroughly Vos and his aides searched for records that American Oversight requested.
In court Tuesday, Vos attorney Ronald Stadler argued American Oversight planned to get into issues that it shouldn’t with the depositions.
“This is a fishing expedition,” he said.