(AP) _ The winning numbers in Saturday evening's drawing of the Wisconsin Lottery's "5 Card Cash" game were: A Wisconsin judge said Thursday that a Republican-ordered, taxpayer-funded investigation into the 2020 election found no evidence of election fraud, but did reveal contempt for the state's open records law by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.
The liberal watchdog group American Oversight was awarded nearly $100,000 in attorneys' fees by a judge in the county. Vos's attorney recommended that Vos appeal the ruling.
The judge said that the fees would be paid by the taxpayers. The investigation has cost taxpayers more than one million dollars.
The people of the state of Wisconsin have been punished. I don't think it's a good idea to place damages on innocent people.
All of American Oversight's lawsuits are related to records requests it made to Vos and Michael Gableman, who was hired by Vos to investigate the 2020 presidential election won by President Joe Biden. Vos ordered the investigation under pressure from Donald Trump, who continues to make false claims about widespread fraud in Wisconsin, which is impossible and which Vos has refused to support.
Decertification was called pointless by Gableman's attorney.
Biden's victory has withstood multiple state and federal lawsuits, an audit by the Legislative Audit Bureau, and a review by a conservative activist law firm. An Associated Press review of Wisconsin and other battleground states found that there wasn't much fraud that could have swayed the election.
Vos and Gableman have lost many times in the American Oversight lawsuits. Both were found to be in contempt for not complying with court orders. The presiding over her last hearing was frustrated.
She said that the process to get here has been torturous. Whatever records were there were either destroyed or not kept. Nobody knows when the records were destroyed.
Vos is required to keep records after an open records request has been filed. If there isn't a pending open records request, they can remove records.
In one case, Gableman testified that he deleted records that he didn't think were relevant to the case. The deletions were alleged to be against the law. Two other cases are still pending.
A judge was going to consider if Gableman had fulfilled requirements to get out of a contempt order. Vos had a deadline to turn over more records.
The case has been about shining a light on government. She said that in the early days of Gableman's probe, he was being paid thousands of dollars a month to sit in the New Berlin library to learn about election law because he didn't know anything about it.
The judge said that the elections should be fair and not be affected by election fraud. There was no evidence of election fraud.
Vos and others have shown that they don't understand the open records law, they don't follow the attorney general's guidance, and they leave it to people who aren't trained on the law to deal with it.
The citizens of this state have learned that lesson.
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