CREW requests records on Wisconsin Speaker Robin Vos’s sham 2020 election investigation

Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is investigating Wisconsin’s results of the 2020 election, following former President Trump’s unfounded accusations of voter fraud within the state. Taxpayers will reportedly fund nearly $20k in salaries for Vos’s investigators and a $44k salary for ‘special counsel’ former-state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who has spoken at a pro-Trump rally. The public deserves full transparency around an investigation that promotes Trump’s Big Lie, especially given the amount of taxpayer-funded resources Vos is reportedly devoting towards it.

CREW has requested Vos’s communications on the investigation with staff; investigators including Gableman, Mike Sandvick, and Steve Page; GOP Assemblymembers, including Representative Janel Brandtjen; and members of the Arizona Senate. CREW also requested records on Vos’s communications around specific Wisconsin counties that have significant minority populations as well as mentions of Black voters, Latino voters, other racial or ethnic minority voters, elderly voters, or voters with disabilities.

Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz characterized Vos’s investigation as a “sham investigation that validates and prolongs the Big Lie,” and taxpayers deserve to know if Vos is abusing taxpayer resources and using his office to pursue debunked voter fraud conspiracy theories. Voters who are already most likely to be disenfranchised have a special interest in knowing if they are being targeted in this “investigation,” given the GOP’s chilling nationwide attack on voting rights following the 2020 election.

Header photo by Emily Hamer/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism under a Creative Commons license.