Vos Held In Contempt of Court

A Dane County judge has found Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in contempt of court for not releasing records collected by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman‘s investigation of the 2020 election.

In a Wednesday ruling, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn ruled that Vos, R-Rochester, and the state Assembly demonstrated “a collective and abject disregard” of a prior order to produce documents from Gableman and his team requested by American Oversight, a nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog group.

During a Jan. 24 hearing, Vos’ chief legal counsel Steve Fawcett, who was listed as the contact person for the Speaker’s office on Gableman’s contract testified that he had not trained Gableman on how to respond to records requests, including what records to keep. Fawcett also testified he had never visited Gableman’s office and didn’t know where it was located.

“That testimony revealed a collective and abject disregard for the Court’s order: 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 in Wednesday’s ruling.

Bailey-Rihn’s latest order gives Vos and the assembly 14 days to submit “proof to a reasonable degree of certainty” that they have searched for records sought by American Oversight.

“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,” wrote Bailey-Rihn.

Bailey-Rihn said that proof should take the form of sworn affidavits describing specific steps taken to find the records and satisfy the court order. If Vos and the Assembly are unable to do so within two weeks, Bailey-Rihn has ordered fines of $1,000 for each day after the deadline.

Staff with Vos’ office did not reply to a WPR email requesting comment on the contempt of court ruling.

The Wisconsin State Journal reported that Vos was asked about the ruling Wednesday afternoon at a pair of town hall meetings in Racine County.

“It’s a liberal judge in Dane County trying to make us look bad,” Vos said. “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 the Legislature has followed the law and there is “no problem with what we’re doing.” He said the lawsuits over the records are an attempt to stop the investigation.

“This all focuses on them not wanting to get to the truth of what happened in 2020,” said Vos.

In June 2021, Vos announced that former justice Gableman would lead an investigation into the 2020 election. That came a day after former President Donald Trump threatened to support primary opponents against Vos and other Wisconsin legislative leaders unless they “step up and support the people who elected them.”

A contract between Gableman and Vos set aside up to $676,000 of taxpayer funding for the investigation.

After Trump lost to President Joe Biden in November 2020 by 20,682 votes he and allies lost repeated efforts to overturn the election in state and federal court.

On March 1, Gableman gave a presentation on his investigation findings in which he told lawmakers to “take a very hard look” at decertifying the 2020 election, which is legally impossible. He also said private grants used to run the election in some cities was akin to “election bribery” and called on lawmakers to “eliminate and dismantle” the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which was created by Republicans.

Robin Vos, Assembly found in contempt of court over 2020 election investigation records was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.