Law Forward
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an 4 26
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports Republican lawmakers are letting taxpayers foot $500-an-hour attorney fees to defend against a lawsuit challenging them “over that very practice” of “using taxpayer money to hire private attorneys.”
“The lawsuit, which was filed by liberal law firm Law Forward in February, followed a 2025 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation that found the state Legislature had spent about $26 million in taxpayer money on legal fees to private law firms since 2017,” reports MJS.
The paper notes that the lawyer fees really kicked in after Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul won the November 2018 election, defeating Republican former Gov. Scott Walker and Attorney General Brad Schimel. The sharp increase in spending also followed a 2018 law passed by Republican legislators, authorizing legislative leaders to hire private lawyers with taxpayer money.
That 2018 law sets no limit to the amount of taxpayer money the Legislature can spend on outside counsel.
Milwaukee-based law firm Fox, O'Neill & Shannon is charging taxpayers $460 and hour to defend Republicans’ new right to hire them. Colorado firm Wheeler Trigg O'Donnell will charge the Senate “a blended rate of $550 an hour for all lawyers who work on this matter," reports MJS.
"It's pretty ironic that the taxpayer will once again be on the hook for the Legislature's inclination to spend, spend, spend on outside lawyers," Jeff Mandell, president and general counsel of Law Forward, said in an emailed statement. "Wisconsin taxpayers are on the hook for a pretty hefty bill, not just from the Assembly, but from the Senate as well."
Neither Assembly Speaker Robin Vos nor Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu responded to requests for an interview.
The Sentinel reports Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill to require a vote by the full Assembly or Senate before either house could hire private counsel at taxpayer expense. That same proposal would require the vote of the full Legislature for a joint appointment.
But Republican leadership killed that bill before a floor vote.
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fox bs jan 2023
Wisconsin judge dismisses case against embattled GOP elections official | Fox News
Wisconsin judge on Tuesday dismissed an open records complaint against a Republican member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission who served as a fake elector for former President Donald Trump.
Allegations that the elections commission violated the state open records law by wrongly withholding documents will go forward, but claims made against Commissioner Robert Spindell were dismissed by Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost.
The commission itself, not Spindell, is the legal authority that must maintain the records in question and be the target of any lawsuit seeking them, Frost ruled after oral arguments.
WI ELECTIONS OFFICIAL STANDS BY COMMENTS APPEARING TO BRAG ABOUT DEPRESSED TURNOUT
Madison-based law firm Law Forward, known for the liberal-leaning cases it takes, filed the lawsuit against the commission and Spindell. Law Forward attorney Scott Thompson said after the hearing that he remained optimistic the records would be turned over even though Spindell is no longer a party to the lawsuit.
Spindell's attorney, Mark Maciolek, called the judge's ruling a correct but technical one.
"It does not relieve anyone in government of their obligations to preserve and produce public records," he said.
A judge has dismissed an open records complaint against Republican Wisconsin Elections Commission member Robert Spindell. (WisconsinEye via AP)
The lawsuit stems from a complaint filed by Law Forward with the elections commission in 2021. It alleged that Republicans illegally posed as Wisconsin electors in an attempt to convince the U.S. Congress to declare that Trump won the state in 2020, even though he in fact lost to President Joe Biden by about 21,000 votes.
Republican attempts to cast electoral college votes for Trump in seven swing states he lost were a focus of the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission last year rejected a complaint about the events, saying that Republicans who attempted to cast the state's 10 electoral college votes for Trump did not break any election laws. Spindell did not recuse himself from considering the complaint, even though he voted as one of the fake GOP electors.
In a closed meeting, the commission voted unanimously to reject the complaint.
The Wisconsin Department of Justice concluded that Republicans were legitimately trying to preserve Trump’s legal standing as courts were deciding if he or Biden won the election. That is the same argument that Trump allies and the fake electors from Wisconsin have made, including in testimony to the Jan. 6 committee.
Law Forward filed two lawsuits after the complaint was rejected.
In one pending action, the group alleges that Spindell should have been excluded from considering the complaint before the commission because his actions were at the heart of the matter.
The other case, heard Tuesday, alleged that Spindell and the elections commission failed to turn over records that Law Forward requested multiple times under Wisconsin's open records law. The law firm sought documents related to a comment Spindell made during the public portion of a November 2021 commission meeting where he openly discussed his decision not to recuse himself from considering the complaint related to fake electors. The commission had been considering the request in closed session only, which made Spindell’s comments unusual.
ACTIVISTS UNSURPRISED BY WI ELECTIONS OFFICIAL'S VOTER TURNOUT COMMENTS
Specifically, Law Forward asked for communications surrounding material Spindell appeared to be reading from during the meeting. According to the lawsuit, the elections commission provided a single document that resembled what Spindell read from and said Spindell had no other related records.
Frost dismissed claims against Spindell, agreeing with his argument that the commission is the legal authority in charge of the records.
Law Forward brought the case on behalf of Paul Sickel, executive director of the Service Employees International Union's Wisconsin State Council.
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The firm has also filed another lawsuit, currently pending in federal court, against the 10 electors and Trump attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis seeking $2.4 million in damages. That case alleges Trump and his allies conspired to overturn his loss in the battleground state.
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https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2022/05/17/lawsuit-seeks-2-4-m-damages-wisconsin-fake-gop-electors/9806375002/
no lnx orig
Lawsuit seeks $2.4M damages from Wisconsin fake GOP electors
Madison, Wis. – Two Wisconsin Democratic electors and a voter on Tuesday sued Republicans who attempted to cast electoral ballots for Donald Trump in 2020 despite Joe Biden’s victory in the battleground state.
Their lawsuit filed in Dane County Circuit Court alleges a conspiracy by Trump and his allies to overturn his loss in the presidential race, calling it “as legally baseless as it was repugnant to democracy.” It seeks up to $2.4 million in damages as well as disqualifying the Republicans from ever serving as electors again.
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The plaintiffs say it’s the first such lawsuit in the seven swing states where GOP electors falsely declared Trump the winner and cast their votes for him in December 2020.
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“It’s essential to have accountability and to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” said Jeffrey Mandell, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “We have heard in the more than a year since the fraudulent electors met the excuse that what they did was not wrong, it was totally fine. We want a court to make clear that is not true.”
Republican electors named in the lawsuit who have spoken publicly about what they did have long argued that they weren’t trying to change the Wisconsin result. Instead, they said they were trying to preserve all their legal options in case a court ruled in favor of Trump.
A Trump campaign official, Stephen Miller, said on Fox News in December 2020 that the GOP slate of electors sent their results to Congress to “ensure that all of our legal remedies remain open.”
The lawsuit names 10 Republican electors and two attorneys who the lawsuit said aided their efforts. The attorneys are Boston-area lawyer Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis, who was Trump’s attorney in Wisconsin. The lawsuit cites a memo Chesebro sent to Troupis in November 2020 detailing the elector plan.
In that memo, Chesebro wrote that “It may seem odd that the electors pledged to Trump and (Vice President Mike) Pence might meet and cast their votes” but a fair reading of federal law “suggests that this is a reasonable course of action.”
Chesebro, when reached by phone and told of the lawsuit, said “Thank you for letting me know I will check into that” before he hung up. Troupis did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment.
Kelly Ruh, one of the 10 electors, said she was not aware of the lawsuit and had no immediate comment. Other defendants contacted did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
The bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, working from an analysis by the state’s Department of Justice that generally accepted that argument, earlier concluded that the Republicans did not break any election laws. But the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection is also looking into the actions of GOP electors, with subpoenas to at least 20 people who were part of the Republican effort in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The U.S. Department of Justice also is investigating.
Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by just under 21,000 votes. That outcome has withstood recounts Trump ordered in the state’s two largest counties, multiple state and federal lawsuits, an independent audit and a review by a conservative law firm. An investigation by The Associated Press of potential voter fraud cases in the battleground states where Trump challenged the results found far too few to affect the outcome of the race.
The lawsuit asks that the Republican electors and the attorneys be fined $2,000 each and pay up to $200,000 each in punitive damages. The lawsuit calls for punitive damages to go to plaintiffs. Mel Barnes, an attorney for Law Forward, said the goal is deterrence, not profit.
“No one joined this lawsuit for the personal gain,” she said.
Electors in the seven states signed certificates falsely stating that Trump, not Biden, had won their states. They mailed those certificates to the National Archives and Congress, where they were ignored. However, several of Trump’s Republican allies in the House and Senate used them to justify delaying or blocking the certification of the election during the joint session of Congress.
On two of the certificates, from New Mexico and Pennsylvania, the Republican electors added a caveat saying the certificate was submitted in case they were later recognized as duly elected, qualified electors. That would only have been possible if Trump had won any of the several dozen legal challenges he filed in the weeks after the election. Instead, he lost them all.
Wisconsin Republicans gathered on Dec. 14, 2020, in the state Capitol in Madison. The state’s 10 Democratic electors, which included lawsuit plaintiffs Khary Penebaker and Mary Arnold, were meeting in the building at the same time. The third plaintiff, Bonnie Joseph, is identified simply as a voter “who objects to Defendants’ unlawful interference” in the Electoral College.
The lawsuit argues the Republicans made unlawful use of public resources when they met at the Capitol.
The Democratic electors who brought the lawsuit are represented by the liberal Law Forward law firm and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at the Georgetown University Law Center. It was Law Forward that earlier brought the complaint that was rejected by the state elections commission.
The groups said they had no immediate plans to file similar lawsuits in the other swing states.
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https://www.wpr.org/democrats-file-lawsuit-against-wisconsin-republicans-who-posed-electors
a group of Democrats is suing the Wisconsin Republicans who posed as presidential electors following the 2020 election, arguing their actions set the stage for the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection of the U.S. Capitol and could be replicated in the future if they're not punished.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Dane County Circuit Court, asks a judge to find that 10 Republicans and two attorneys who advised them broke a variety of laws, including one that bans people from falsely acting as public officials.
The lawsuit comes after the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission already rejected a formal complaint against the Republicans, who have argued they were preserving legal options for former President Donald Trump. Additionally, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, has declined to charge the false electors.
But Jeff Mandell, the lead attorney bringing the case for Democrats, said there needs to be consequences for the false electors, who were pivotal to Trump's strategy to try to overturn the results of the election on Jan. 6.
"If we do not clearly say, 'This was wrong, this was illegal, this can never happen again,' we are inviting it happening again," Mandell said in an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio. "And especially here in Wisconsin, where we perennially have very close elections, that's a tremendous danger to our democracy."
Republicans named in the lawsuit met at the state Capitol to cast votes for Trump on Dec. 14, 2020, the same day Wisconsin's Democratic electors cast Wisconsin's official electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden.
Both meetings happened shortly after the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the Trump campaign's last remaining lawsuit in Wisconsin seeking to overturn Biden's victory in Wisconsin. Trump and his allies had previously lost several cases challenging election results in both state and federal courts.
Wisconsin's actual electors sent official documents affirming Biden's victory to the president of the U.S. Senate, the Wisconsin secretary of state, the National Archives and the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. The Republicans posing as electors sent their own official-looking documents to the same places.
Mandell, who is lead counsel for the liberal group Law Forward, said his clients would like a judge to issue an order requiring Republicans to correct the historical record.
"So that anyone who was to look at the National Archives or other places where the papers that they fraudulently submitted have been stored would also find a copy of the court order saying that this was illegal," Mandell said. "And we'd like the court to say that none of these folks can ever participate as presidential electors in the state of Wisconsin."
Mandell said Democrats would also ask a judge to assess a fine of up to $2,000 per person for wrongdoing. He said they’re also pursuing punitive damages of up to $200,000 per person.
The state law banning people "from falsely assuming to act as a public officer" states violators are guilty of a felony punishable by up to three and a half years in prison.
The Democratic plaintiffs bringing the lawsuit include Khary Penebaker and Mary Arnold, two of the official electors who cast votes for Biden. They also include Democratic activist Bonnie Joseph.
defendants include all 10 of the Republicans who acted as electors: Andrew Hitt; Robert Spindell; Bill Feehan; Kelly Ruh; Carol Brunner; Scott Grabins; Kathy Kiernan; Darryl Carlson; Pam Travis; and Mary Buestrin.
Hitt was the chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin at the time. Earlier this year, he was subpoenaed by the U.S. House of RepresentativesSelect Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States. Ruh, who was until recently a member of the De Pere Common Council, was also subpoenaed because she was listed as the secretary for the group.
Spindell is one of three Republican appointees to the six-member Wisconsin Elections Commission, where at least some Democrats have called for his removal. Mandell argues Spindell should have been disqualified from voting on the formal complaint against him.
Feehan, the chair of the La Crosse County Republican Party and a former candidate for the state Legislature, is on the leadership committee for former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch’s gubernatorial campaign.
Also named as defendants in the lawsuit are attorneys Jim Troupis and Kenneth Chesebro, two attorneys who helped steer the GOP electors strategy for Trump.
Chesebro, a Boston attorney, wrote a memo to Troupis dated Nov. 18, 2020 that was obtained and published earlier this year by The New York Times. Troupis was the lead attorney for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin. The memo, which was written the same day the Trump campaign asked for a partial recount of Wisconsin’s election results, is the earliest document on record outlining the Trump campaign's plan to use "alternate" electors to contest the election.
After the Wisconsin Elections Commission ruled in Republicans' favor in March, Hitt said in an email to The Associated Press that he was grateful for the decision.
"I had no illusions the actions we took as Republican electors ... were going to change the rightful result of the election either in Wisconsin or nationally," Hitt told The AP in March. "We simply gathered on the advice of legal counsel to ensure all options were preserved in case of a court decision favorable to the Trump legal team in ongoing litigation."
In an emailed statement, Paul Farrow, chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, called the lawsuit frivolous.
"This frivolous lawsuit from a liberal group is yet another Democrat attempt to resurrect a baseless story from two years ago," Farrow said. "Even the Wisconsin Elections Commission voted unanimously to not sanction anyone. Democrats have tried to use this event to distract from their abysmal record on election reform. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now."
Mandell is formally appealing the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s decision in court. He said that case is more narrowly tailored to state election laws, whereas the latest complaint is more broad.
The Wisconsin Republicans who posed as electors were not alone in 2020.The U.S. House Committee that subpoenaed Hitt and Ruhalso sent subpoenas to false electors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
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