Suspension Demanded For GOP Oligarchs Coup Lawyer Gableman
Wisconsin moves to sideline Michael Gableman, Trump’s pet investigator who lied under oath, menaced mayors, and burned public money to peddle a 2020 decertification fantasy. This is not a glitch. It is governance by oligarchs. Billionaire funded myths in, democratic legitimacy out. Three year law license suspension is the floor, not justice.
Suspension Demanded For GOP Oligarchs Coup Lawyer Gableman
Wisconsin democracy hijacked by a paid saboteur
I watched a state I love turned into a testing ground for sabotage by men who treat the vote like a hostile takeover. Michael Gableman, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who embraced the lie that Trump won, was not hired to investigate. He was hired to break confidence in the ballot and salt the earth so nothing true could grow. He sat in our courts snarling like a man above the law, held in contempt after berating a judge and stonewalling simple questions. That is not oversight. That is paid vandalism of a public trust.
This was not an accident. It was a job. A saboteur given a budget, a staff, and the imprimatur of the Assembly to wage a campaign against reality and the people who make elections run. The assignment was simple. Spread doubt. Smear public servants. Confuse the press. Pretend the looting was accountability.
Gableman admits misconduct as regulators seek three-year ban
On Friday a referee for the Office of Lawyer Regulation recommended a three-year suspension of Gableman’s law license. Ten violations of professional conduct. Lying under oath. Abusing subpoenas. Threatening to jail mayors without cause. Violating open records laws. Violating client confidences. He did not contest the facts. He admitted the misconduct by plea and tried to minimize it with lawyerly shrugs.
Referee James Winiarski said the quiet part at a volume that finally carries. A high level of discipline is needed to protect the public, the courts, and the legal system. If the Wisconsin Supreme Court agrees, it would be a rare moment when consequence meets power in the same room. The justices usually follow the referee. In this case, colleagues who once shared a bench with Gableman may recuse. It should not matter. The facts are heavy enough.
Oligarch money and party bosses built this wrecking crew
Billionaire power does not always arrive with gold cufflinks. Sometimes it arrives as a stipend and a lease for a suite no one needs, a monthly retainer that buys the time required to corrode the pipes of democracy. Gableman was paid eleven thousand dollars per month. Consultants and outside lawyers fed at the trough. Private wealth underwrote a national disinformation machine, then used local party bosses to swing the hammer.
This was the point. Strip mine the public spirit while media cynics call it both-sides theater. Replace civic patience with partisan rage. Sell our exhaustion back to us as inevitability.
Vos bankrolls a decertification scheme with our tax dollars
Speaker Robin Vos hired Gableman in 2021. He expanded the budget to more than six hundred thousand dollars and gave him more time even as nothing credible was produced. Then the Assembly dropped another two point three million on rent, travel, consultants, outside lawyers, and court fines and penalties. That is our money. Our schools did not see it. Our elder care did not see it. It went to a political op who later endorsed Vos’s primary challenger before getting fired.
This was not oversight. It was a decertification scheme financed by Wisconsin families who were told to tighten their belts while a political insider loosened his around a buffet table of state resources. You are not underpaid. You are being extracted.
From courtroom contempt to perjury, the method is impunity
The blueprint was impunity. Treat courts like stages. Treat judges like props. Treat truth like a speed bump. In June 2022 at the Dane County Courthouse, Gableman refused to answer basic questions and berated a sitting judge, earning a contempt finding. Under oath he lied to the Assembly. When cornered he tried to turn the lights off and walk away. Power taught him he could get away with it. The referee’s report is the first real reminder that maybe he cannot.
We teach our kids that oaths mean something. Try telling them that after they read the transcript.
Threatening mayors, smearing judges, shredding records
He threatened to jail the mayors of Madison and Green Bay without legal basis. He made derogatory statements about judges and opposing counsel. He mishandled public records, then hid behind chaos he created. He broke confidentiality and publicly pressured his own client, the Speaker, to keep the circus going. This is not tough oversight. It is thuggery in a tie.
If you can bully your way through City Hall and shred the files, you can silence clerks who keep the books clean. That is the point. Make honesty look dangerous. Make corruption look like courage.
Media stenography normalized the coup as a ‘review’
Television panels called it a review. Some newspapers called it an audit. The verb laundering never stopped. A coup attempt by spreadsheet does not get kinder when you swap in milder nouns. The man pushed decertification long after the vote was counted, recounted, litigated, and affirmed by courts and auditors. That is not a review. That is an attack, and the outlets that downplayed it helped it grow.
This is not dysfunction. It is domination.
Zuckerberg grants twisted into racist bait for voters
One of his central claims rested on grants from the Center for Tech and Civic Life. Funds were given nationwide to help administer elections during a pandemic. In Wisconsin the money supported the largest cities. He warped this into a fantasy about bribing Black voters. That lie was not a bug. It was a feature designed to paint multiracial turnout as suspect by default.
When you call civic participation a bribe, you are not defending integrity. You are announcing a hierarchy of whose votes count.
Nursing home elders used as props, not neighbors to serve
He charged that election officials illegally failed to send special voting deputies into nursing homes, conveniently ignoring the pandemic rule that barred visitors to protect residents. Our elders were used as props for scaremongering, not neighbors to serve. The cruelty has a purpose. Weaponize vulnerability. Then accuse caregivers of cheating when they follow public health rules.
Every accusation was a mirror. The cheating was in the charge itself. The goal was to make people fear the ballot they had already cast.
2.3 million burned on rent, grifters, fines and fear
Two point three million in expenses. That figure wraps around a winter of evictions and school shortfalls and still finds enough room for consulting invoices and court penalties. The Assembly was not investing in truth. It was buying noise. This is what extraction looks like when it wears a flag pin. Take from the public, give to the loyalists, then pretend the bill is patriotism.
You want to understand austerity. Watch who never has to tighten anything.
Clerks and volunteers faced harassment while needs starved
While the checks cleared for Gableman, local clerks and volunteers endured threats and abuse. They kept counting while private bullhorns called them criminals. No raise for the people who work twenty-hour days in fluorescent rooms to certify our future. No surge of resources for the backbone of democracy. Just more subpoenas, more press releases, and more fear.
The cruelty cascaded downward. It always does. That is how class power survives.
Courts now asked to clean a mess engineered by power
The Wisconsin Supreme Court now gets the broom. The parties have twenty days to appeal the referee’s recommendation. Gableman’s own lawyer signaled he is content with the outcome and floated recusal for justices who once served with his client. The Supreme Court should not struggle to say the obvious. If you lie under oath, abuse your office, and try to unravel the vote, you are not fit to practice law.
Let the record be clear. Officials confirmed no widespread fraud in 2020. Biden won Wisconsin by more than twenty thousand votes. In 2024 Kamala Harris lost Wisconsin by nearly thirty thousand. The system worked despite the sabotage, not because of it.
Three-year suspension is a start, not justice
Three years on the bench of nowhere is not justice. It is a timeout for a man who helped rich interests test whether truth can be turned off like a light. A suspension will not repay the fear pumped into nursing homes or the harassment suffered by clerks. It will not restore the hours stolen from the courts by bad faith litigation.
Accountability means more than a pause. It means consequences that fill the hole he helped dig.
Disbar, repay, and end the pay-to-sabotage election racket
Start with repayment of every public dollar squandered. Add disbarment. End the revolving door that lets political operatives launder influence through fake investigations. Ban the practice of using public funds to finance partisan fishing expeditions dressed up as audits.
If you want a system people trust, stop hiring arsonists to inspect the hydrants.
Democracy means public money for care, not coups
Budgets are moral texts. We chose to fund a decertification fantasy while school districts begged for counselors and rural clinics fought to keep doors open. Public money should buy ballots, poll worker pay, accessible polling sites, and secure systems. It should not buy a bully pulpit for a man who sees voters as obstacles to be moved.
Care is the opposite of sabotage. Choose one.
Organize across class and race or surrender the ballot
They are counting on our fatigue. They want you to think democracy is a headache, not a birthright. Organize precinct by precinct. Defend clerks. Flood county meetings. Train poll workers. Build unions that see the ballot as a workplace tool. Across class and race, link wages and votes, housing and precincts, childcare and canvasses.
They have money. We have numbers. Use them.
The irreversible truth: oligarchy or a multiracial democracy
The choice is not abstract. It is oligarchy or a multiracial democracy that feeds and shelters and counts every voice. Remember the names. Remember the invoices. Remember the contempt order, the lies, the threats, the appendix begging to nullify your will. Then act.
No more paid sabotage. No more billionaire-engineered collapse. Organize, recall, disbar, and rebuild until the people who tried to steal your future are a warning, not a plan.
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