MADISON – Meeting Republicans’ evaluation of the 2020 election has drawn a 3rd ethics grievance towards its chief because the partisan probe’s value to taxpayers continues to soar into the thousands and thousands six months after it was dropped.

Attorneys representing targets of former Supreme Court docket Justice Michael Gableman’s inquiry filed a 108-page grievance with the Wisconsin Workplace of Lawyer Regulation this week alleging Gableman’s conduct throughout the evaluation amounted to a “shambolic, dishonest, and harmful marketing campaign towards Wisconsin’s democracy at taxpayer expense and within the guise of a public official.”

“By means of the course of our illustration of our purchasers, and as attorneys who adopted these issues carefully, we got here to know that Gableman repeatedly violated the Guidelines, in addition to to query his honesty, trustworthiness, and health to be a Wisconsin lawyer,” Daniel Lenz and Jeff Mandel, attorneys with the corporations Regulation Ahead and Stafford Rosenbaum, wrote in a grievance filed Thursday.

“Along with incompetently training regulation, Gableman repeatedly failed in his duties of honesty and candor; used authorized course of to harass and maliciously injure his targets; did not appropriately keep an attorney-client relationship; flouted further fundamental guidelines of authorized apply; and violated a number of provisions of the Lawyer’s Oath.”

Meeting Speaker Robin Vos employed Gableman throughout the summer time of 2021 underneath strain from former President Donald Trump, who had publicly assailed Vos and different Republican legislative leaders for not taking unlawful motion to overturn his 2020 election loss.

Vos introduced the probe and the hiring of Gableman as Trump ramped up his efforts to trick his supporters into believing large voter fraud had robbed him of a second time period as president, as a substitute of acknowledging that he had not acquired as many votes throughout the 2020 presidential election as Joe Biden. Biden defeated Trump by about 21,000 votes in Wisconsin, an end result verified by recounts, courtroom rulings, an impartial audit and an outdoor evaluation.

The 14-month endeavor turned up no proof of election corruption, as a substitute selling baseless conspiracy theories concerning the 2020 election and creating a gradual drumbeat of explosive courtroom hearings and rulings in lawsuits over Gableman’s want to jail election officers and mayors who refused to be interviewed behind closed doorways, and his determination to ignore requests from the general public for data associated to his probe. 

Vos and Gableman didn’t instantly reply to the allegations within the grievance.

Gableman’s efforts have value taxpayers greater than $2 million

Gableman’s efforts, which formally started on July 1, 2021, have now value taxpayers greater than $2 million as a substitute of the $676,000 unique funds set by Vos.

Most just lately, a Dane County choose ordered Vos to pay $135,000 in authorized charges to the liberal watchdog group American Oversight for the group’s profitable lawsuit to acquire data associated to the probe — an order that can be fulfilled with taxpayer cash.

“Look, the investigation is over. We’re transferring ahead. It’s only these liberal activists who cannot let the 2020 election go,” Vos mentioned Wednesday, noting he’ll probably attraction the order. “We have moved on from that so hopefully they’ll, too.”

Vos fired Gableman in August 2022 after Gableman campaigned for Vos’ major opponent. On the time, Vos mentioned Gableman might lose his regulation license over his habits.

“When you’ve a shopper, and also you resolve to besmirch the very shopper that’s paying you, I am not a lawyer however I feel that’s towards the authorized code or the authorized ethics or no matter it’s,” Vos mentioned on Aug. 16.

Thursday’s grievance is not less than the third filed towards Gableman over the probe.

In July, a former Milwaukee lawyer filed a grievance that alleged Gableman was “knowingly advancing a declare or protection that’s unwarranted underneath present regulation” by suggesting in March that lawmakers ought to contemplate decertifying the 2020 election.

In March 2022, Gableman drew nationwide consideration when he introduced a report to the Meeting elections committee and declared, “I consider the Legislature should take a really onerous take a look at the choice of decertification.” He argued there have been “vital grounds” for doing so, at the same time as Vos and consultants on the left and proper — and Gableman’s personal lawyer — mentioned the notion was legally inconceivable.

Dane County Circuit Choose Frank Remington in June additionally despatched a transcript of remarks Gableman made in his courtroom to a different lawyer that have been caught on a reside microphone to the Workplace of Lawyer Regulation after he berated Remington and a feminine lawyer in a listening to whereas refusing to reply their questions about his dealing with of public data requests associated to the election evaluation. 

The Workplace of Lawyer Regulation investigates complaints in personal and makes sanctions suggestions to the state Supreme Court docket, a course of that may take months.

Molly Beck may be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.