Gableman hires Trump White House attorney for 2020 review who claims without evidence that election was stolen

Patrick Marley
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MADISON - Assembly Republicans are using an attorney for their review of last year's election who has maintained without evidence that the election was stolen and argued that conservatives need prosecutors who will "let our boys off the hook."

The lawyer, Andrew Kloster, worked in the White House under former President Donald Trump. He told the Assembly Elections Committee in March he is not an election attorney and has a "limited understanding" of election laws.

His hiring surfaced just days after Gableman said he does not have "any understanding of how elections work." Like Kloster, Gableman without evidence has stated the election was stolen.

Gableman's team of about half a dozen has been charged with looking into an election that recounts and court rulings have concluded was won by Joe Biden by 0.6 points. Taxpayers are spending about $680,000 on the effort.

"Certainly somebody who has already declared that the election was stolen is in no position to be any part of a fair or impartial investigation," said Rep. Lisa Subeck, a Madison Democrat who serves on the Assembly Elections Committee. 

Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman is overseeing a partisan review of the 2020 election for Wisconsin Republicans.

Kloster’s name first appeared last month, when his name showed up as having created a document for Gableman. On Thursday, Gableman aide Zakory Niemierowicz confirmed Kloster is working for Gableman. He declined to name anyone else on the payroll.

Over the last week, Gableman served subpoenas on election officials and the mayors of five cities. He relented on his demands late Thursday, saying they could provide him with a much smaller set of documents that have already been made public.

His review so far has focused on grants the state's five largest cities received from the Center for Tech and Civic Life to help conduct their elections. The nonprofit group, which provided grants to more than 200 Wisconsin municipalities, is funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.

As part of its probe, Gableman's team has been in touch with Sandy Juno, the former Brown County clerk and a critic of the outside help for Green Bay. Juno declined to say anything other than that she had been contacted.

Kris Teske, who served as Green Bay's clerk in the run-up to the election, did not answer whether Gableman had contacted her. Teske, who is now the Ashwaubenon village clerk, in response to an open records request said she had no written communications from Gableman’s office.

Andrew Kloster served as a Republican election observer

Kloster, who worked as an election observer for Republicans in Green Bay, appeared before the Assembly Elections Committee in March to question many aspects of how the election was conducted. Kloster, who served as a personnel attorney under Trump, acknowledged before the committee that he has a "limited understanding" of election law.

"I'm not an election attorney. I'm not a Wisconsin attorney," he told the committee.

Kloster told the committee he was friends with Gableman, who served as a Republican election observer in Milwaukee last year.

Kloster, who has held posts across the federal government and worked at the conservative Heritage Foundation, in March called himself "the Forrest Gump of the Right” in an online post.

In another post, Kloster claimed Republicans had an inadequate political machine in Wisconsin.

"The issue is that we need our own army of local bureaucrats," he wrote. "And we need to fight for our locales. We need our own irate hooligans (incidentally, this is why the left and our national security apparatus hates the Proud Boys) and our own captured DA offices to let our boys off the hook."

The Proud Boys are a far-right group that was present at the Jan. 6 insurrection that attempted to prevent Congress from confirming Biden's win.

Niemierowicz said Kloster was not available Thursday because he is in Virginia this week. Kloster did not respond to an email.

Gableman visited Fond du Lac to learn how elections work

Attention in recent days has been on Gableman's subpoenas to the state's top elections official and the mayors of Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine. More quietly, Gableman’s team recently visited Fond du Lac County to help get up to speed on how elections work.

County Clerk Lisa Freiberg said she invited Gableman to learn more about her processes. Freiberg, a Republican, has said she has been bombarded with false claims from the public about an election she properly ran.

Fond du Lac County Clerk Lisa Freiberg

She talked to Gableman last week by phone and was visited the next day for about two hours by two people from his team, she said. She declined to name who came to her office, saying that was information for Gableman to disclose.

She said she showed Gableman's team how voting machines work to emphasize that the machines themselves don't retain information. Data is kept on memory cards.

"They got to see the machine did nothing without the memory cards in them," she said.

She said she also talked to them about the need to get a software update soon for her Dominion Voting Systems machines. In a recent letter to clerks, Gableman asked clerks about updates that could delete important data. Clerks have said updates don't do that.

The visit to Fond du Lac County came days before Gableman told a reporter he doesn't understand election processes. 

"No one can call elections laws common sense. Once you understand them, it may be common sense but it's not intuitive," Gableman said this week. "And so most people, myself included, do not have a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work."

Gableman's interviews possible eventually

Gableman's subpoenas sought to take testimony from mayors and election officials on Oct. 15 and Oct. 22 at a rented office in Brookfield. He canceled those interviews Thursday but they could be rescheduled.

Gableman has suggested any interviews would happen behind closed doors, but Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway has called for them to be conducted before the public.

State law doesn't explicitly allow Gableman to interview officials on his own, but courts very well may let that happen, according to a memo from nonpartisan legislative attorneys.

That's in part because of a state Supreme Court decision that Gableman helped decide when he was on the court.

State law gives legislators the power to issue subpoenas that compel people to appear before legislative committees. Gableman's subpoenas tell officials they should appear before him, not a committee.

Given the way the law is written, that doesn't appear to be allowed, according to the memo from the Legislative Council, which advises lawmakers.

"If a court considers the statutes directly and specifically relating to legislative subpoenas and applies a plain language analysis, these statutes appear to compel a witness to appear, and produce documents for a legislative committee and not a separate entity," the memo stated.

Courts may view the issue differently, the memo noted.

"A court may refrain from questioning whether an authorized investigation should be carried out in a specific manner by an independent branch (of government)," the memo stated.

It went on to note the state Supreme Court has often declined to question the practices of the Legislature, citing the 2011 decision that found lawmakers did not have to comply with the open meetings law.

Gableman was part of the 4-3 majority that decided that case. The ruling put into effect Act 10, the law that all but ended collective bargaining for most public workers in Wisconsin.

The memo noted committees can hire experts to assist them, which the attorneys found lent credence to the notion that officials could be compelled to appear before Gableman, rather than the Assembly Elections Committee. The subpoenas were issued in the name of the committee, which bolsters the idea that Gableman could take testimony on his own, the attorneys wrote.

Democratic Rep. Mark Spreitzer of Beloit, who asked for the memo as a member of the committee, remained skeptical about how Gableman could conduct his interviews.

“It is clear that Michael Gableman is making things up as he goes along and crossing his fingers that his far-right allies on the State Supreme Court will rubber stamp his waste of taxpayer dollars later," he said in a statement.

Contact Patrick Marley at patrick.marley@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @patrickdmarley.