If the Arizona GOP’s 2020 election “audit” was a sham, the Wisconsin GOP’s sham “audit” is a three-ring circus.
Its star performer is Michael Gableman (bio here), a GOP political operative who served a single tumultuous term on Wisconsin’s supreme court.
Gableman, a Trump supporter and election denier, was hired by Republican legislators at taxpayer expense to investigate alleged fraud in the 2020 election in Wisconsin. Biden won the state, and a recount of Democratic counties paid for by the Trump campaign confirmed the results and uncovered no systematic fraud.
His “investigation” (I wrote about it here and here) has been characterized by secrecy, destruction of emails and records, threats to jail political opponents, and refusal to comply with court orders.
Now, Gableman is in trouble. In court on Friday, June 10, 2022, he was combative and disrespectful to the judge, and made demeaning remarks about the attorney representing a group seeking disclosure of records. See story here and watch video below. That got him held in contempt, fined, and referred to the bar association for discipline (see judge’s order here).
This has nothing to do with election integrity. Gableman is a partisan attack dog, and his antics are part and parcel of Republican efforts to undermine their supporters’ trust of the election system in order to restrict voting access and baselessly cast doubt on election results, as part of the GOP’s larger attack against democracy itself.