Dane Co. judge revokes election probe's attorneys' ability to practice in Wisconsin
Decision calls brief they filed a ‘manifestation of incompetency’
A Dane County judge revoked the ability of five out-of-state attorneys to represent in court the Assembly Office of Special Counsel — which has spent more than a year conducting a review of the 2020 presidential election.
The judge, Frank Remington, wrote a scathing opinion in which he systematically refuted a number of false claims the attorneys had made while representing the office and its leader, the recently fired Michael Gableman. Remington wrote that because the five attorneys signed their names to motions which applied “phony legal principles to invented facts” the lawyers no longer have the ability to work on the case pro hac vice — a legal principle which allows attorneys not licensed in a state to practice in conjunction with a local attorney.
Among the attorneys Remington removed from the case is James Bopp, an Indiana-based lawyer who has been influential in Republican efforts to overturn the 2020 election and criminalize abortion.
The OSC attorneys had filed a motion seeking for Remington to recuse himself from the case because they claimed he favored American Oversight over them. Remington countered that the attorneys misrepresented or twisted the facts in order to try to show he was biased against Gableman’s review.
https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2022/08/17/dane-co-judge-revokes-election-probes-attorneys-ability-to-practice-in-wisconsin/
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Judge issues scathing rebuke of Michael Gableman, his out-of-state attorneys
https://captimes.com/news/government/judge-issues-scathing-rebuke-of-michael-gableman-his-out-of-state-attorneys/article_b5546a6d-717b-5df4-a8c7-5ea132dc3967.html?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter_CapTimes
By Jack Kelly 20 hrs ago
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Remington also said evidence from the early months of the review “speaks for itself.”
“(The Office of Special Counsel) accomplished nothing,” Remington said of Gableman’s review. “It kept none of the weekly progress reports the Wisconsin State Assembly required it to keep. It recorded no interviews with witnesses. It gathered no measurable data. It organized no existing data into any analytical format. It generated no reports based on any special expertise.”
“Instead, it gave its employees code names like ‘coms’ or ‘3,’ apparently for the sole purpose of emailing back and forth about news articles and drafts of speeches,” Remington continued. “It printed copies of reports that better investigators had already written, although there is no evidence any person connected with OSC ever read these reports, let alone critically analyzed their factual and legal bases to draw his or her own principled conclusions.”
Remington said the “time has come and gone for (the office) to show its substance. There simply is nothing there.”
He also said that if the case had not been appealed, he could sanction Bopp and the other attorneys representing the Office of Special Counsel for “their specious legal arguments.”
“I could sanction them doubly for their baseless factual statements under (state statute),” the judge continued. “However, the case is long since passed to the judges of the court of appeals. I trust, now, in their capable judgment to enforce the will of the legislature that we ‘deter repetition of such conduct or comparable conduct.’”
“Let this decision set the record straight,” Remington said in conclusion.
The Office of Special Counsel is currently staffless, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told reporters Tuesday. Vos last week fired Gableman after the election reviewer endorsed his primary opponent.
The speaker said he was uncertain about the next steps for the flurry of lawsuits the office is involved in, and needed to speak further with the Legislature’s attorneys before providing an update.
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A Dane County judge issued a scathing opinion Wednesday that chastised the Wisconsin Office of Special Counsel — once headed by Michael Gableman — and its attorneys for applying “phony legal principles to invented facts” in a records-related lawsuit concerning Gableman’s review of the 2020 presidential election.
RUTHIE HAUGE
