Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, czar of the state House GOP’s 2020 election “review” has petitioned a court to toss mayors Eric Genrich of Green Bay and Satya Rhodes-Conway of Madison in jail for failing to appear for testimony in his little investigation, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports. Attorneys for the two mayors say the grown man who wears dental braces never specified when or where the interviews should take place, and mayor Genrich’s attorney wrote a letter to a county judge asking him to sanction Gableman for his dumbassery.
“Based on our initial review, the Petition is not only lacking in legal merit and built upon a gross distortion of the relevant facts, but it departs so greatly from legal standards that Mayor Genrich intends to serve the Special Counsel with a motion for sanctions,” Green Bay city attorney Jeffrey Mandell wrote to Waukesha County Circuit Judge Ralph Ramirez on Wednesday.
Gableman’s Chief Wiggum-like handling of the “investigation” doesn’t quite draw the same headlines as the now-infamous Cyber Ninjas clusterfuck in Arizona did, but all the gross incompetence and downright malevolent intent is very much there – and in many ways worse. A fake cybersecurity company based in Florida with zero experience conducting election audits – real or fake – getting hired to do just that in Arizona was never going to end well. A Wisconsin judge formerly of the state’s highest court investigating the election in Wisconsin sounds much more reasonable on paper and didn’t have to be a complete shitshow. But here we are nonetheless.