A Dane County Circuit judge held Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in contempt of court Wednesday for failing to provide requested public documents related to the ongoing GOP-ordered review of the 2020 election.
Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn’s ruling followed her previous order that Vos, R-Rochester, and the Assembly produce the records, which were requested last year by liberal watchdog group American Oversight. The requested documents include records created by contractors, including former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who is leading the review.
“Robin Vos had delegated the search for contractors’ records to an employee who did nothing more than send one vague email to one contractor,” Bailey-Rihn wrote. “Putting aside for the moment the impropriety of making a contractor responsible for a records request … Robin Vos did not tell that contractor which records to produce, did not ask any of the other contractors to produce records, and did not even review the records ultimately received. Still worse, the Assembly did nothing at all.”
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Bailey-Rihn concluded that Vos and the Assembly, “after hearing and notice, have chosen to willfully violate a court order and are held in contempt.”
Vos and the Assembly have been ordered to pay American Oversight’s legal fees related to the contempt motion. Vos has 14 days to comply with the judge’s order or begin paying a $1,000 daily forfeiture. If Vos and the Assembly provide proof they have complied with the state’s public records law, the contempt ruling will be lifted.
“Because of the uncontroverted evidence that the Respondents failed to instruct contractors to preserve records, each Respondent shall submit evidentiary proof of reasonable efforts to search for deleted, lost, missing, or otherwise unavailable records, or provide an explanation of why such a search would not be reasonable,” Bailey-Rihn added.
Approached by a reporter following a pair of town halls in western Racine County Wednesday afternoon, during which Vos repeatedly told listeners that the 2020 election could not be decertified, Vos responded to being found in contempt of court.
“It’s a liberal judge in Dane County trying to make us look bad. I don’t know about you, but when you have deleted emails, how do you get deleted emails back if they’re from Gmail? We already have an expert saying they can’t be done. You have a judge who’s focused on making a name for herself, and that’s all she’s doing,” Vos said.
“We have followed the law. There is no problem with what we’re doing. It’s really them trying to stop our investigation. This all focuses on them not wanting to get to the truth of what happened in 2020. … You can’t produce emails that you don’t have,” he said.
When asked how he would legally be responding to being found in contempt of court, Vos said he would have to consult with “our attorneys.”
“Speaker Vos and the Assembly have had ample opportunity to comply with the court’s order and produce records,” American Oversight senior adviser Melanie Sloan said in a statement. “Maybe the threat of a $1,000/day fine until the records are produced will finally encourage compliance and give the people of Wisconsin the answers they deserve.”
Bailey-Rihn did not seek sanctions against Assembly Chief Clerk Ted Blazel, who is also named in the lawsuit. Bailey-Rihn determined that the Assembly, and not Blazel, is primarily responsible for the requested records.
The case is one of three records-related lawsuits filed by American Oversight against Vos, the Assembly and Gableman, who was hired by Vos last year to review the election at a cost of $676,000 to taxpayers.
In a separate American Oversight case, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Frank Remington earlier this month ordered the release of hundreds of pages of documents related to Gableman’s review. Remington described the records as “much to-do about nothing.”
Remington ordered Vos, Gableman and the Assembly to each pay $1,000 in damages to American Oversight and cover the group’s legal fees — costs that could fall to taxpayers.
Vos has extended Gableman’s contract through the end of April. The new contract maintains Gableman’s existing budget, but does allow for the possibility of added funds to cover the costs of multiple lawsuits related to the probe.
In addition, Vos said earlier this month he might rescind subpoenas issued to mayors and election officials as part of Gableman’s review, but only so that a Republican attorney general elected in November could file criminal charges. Vos has not provided specifics on what criminal charges could be pursued.
(Racine) Journal Times reporter Scott Williams contributed to this report.
The 2020 election is over. Here’s what happened (and what didn’t)
The 2020 election was “the most secure in American history,” according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which coordinates the nation’s election infrastructure.
While a handful of voters risked going to prison by attempting to vote twice or in the name of a dead relative, as happens in any election, no evidence of widespread fraud has ever been produced in Wisconsin or elsewhere.
Yet, many continue to question some of the practices clerks relied on to encourage eligible voters to cast ballots and make sure their votes were counted amid the first election in more than 100 years held during a pandemic.
The Wisconsin State Journal has covered every twist and turn of this debate in scores of stories. But here are a few that offered some broader context about what happened, and didn't happen, in the election of 2020.
The state has multiple, overlapping safeguards aimed at preventing ineligible voters from casting ballots, tampering with the ballots or altering vote totals.
Nothing in the emails suggests there were problems with the election that contributed in any meaningful way to Trump's 20,682-vote loss to Joe Biden.
"Despite concerns with statewide elections procedures, this audit showed us that the election was largely safe and secure," Sen. Rob Cowles said Friday.
The grants were provided to every Wisconsin municipality that asked for them, and in the amounts they asked for.
"Application of the U.S. Department of Justice guidance among the clerks in Wisconsin is not uniform," the memo says.
YORKVILLE — The Racine County Sheriff’s Office announced in a Thursday morning news conference that it has identified eight cases of what it believes to be election fraud at a Mount Pleasant nursing home.
The memo states that state law gives the Audit Bureau complete access to all records during an audit investigation and federal law and guidance does not prohibit an election official from handing over election records.
Drop boxes were used throughout Wisconsin, including in areas where Trump won the vast majority of counties.
Thousands of ballot certifications examined from Madison are a window onto how elections officials handled a pandemic and a divided and unhelpful state government.
"I don't think that you instill confidence in a process by kind of blindly assuming there's nothing to see here," WILL president and general counsel Rick Esenberg said.
The Associated Press reviewed every potential case of voter fraud in six battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvan…
The report is the latest to show that there was not widespread fraud in Wisconsin.
The clear insinuation was that someone not qualified to conduct an election improperly influenced these vulnerable voters. But the Wisconsin State Journal could not confirm the data.
The turnout at nursing homes in Brown, Kenosha, Milwaukee and Racine counties in 2020 was not much different from the turnout in 2016.
