Michael Gableman

Michael J. Gableman (born September 18, 1966) is an American lawyer and former justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

A Republican, he has been described as a hard-line conservative.

From June 2021 until August 2022, Gableman was employed as a "special counsel" by Wisconsin Assembly speaker Robin Vos to investigate the results of the 2020 United States presidential election in Wisconsin.

His fourteen-month investigation resulted in various unsubstantiated accusations against municipal clerks and members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, and cost the state more than two million dollars.

Gableman himself became a lightning rod for controversy and was the subject of several lawsuits and personal disputes with other officials; he was ultimately fired by Vos just three days after the August 2022 primary elections in Wisconsin.

In a February 2024 settlement to one lawsuit, Assembly Republican leadership conceded that Gableman had also violated state public records laws during his investigation.

Michael J. Gableman was born in West Allis, Wisconsin, in 1966 and raised in Waukesha County.

He is a graduate of New Berlin West High School (1984) and Ripon College (1988), where he earned a bachelor's degree in education and history.

After college, Gableman taught American history at George Washington High School in the Milwaukee Public School system (1988–1989) before pursuing a legal career.

He graduated from Hamline University School of Law in 1993.

While in law school, he worked as a part-time law clerk in the United States Attorney's office in Minneapolis.

After graduating, he served as a law clerk at the state district court level in Douglas County, Minnesota, and the state circuit court level in Brown County, Wisconsin.

He became a half-time assistant district attorney in Langlade County, Wisconsin, in 1996, and worked the other half time at a private law office while also serving as deputy corporation counsel for Forest County.

Gableman then worked as an assistant district attorney in Marathon County.

In May 1999, governor Tommy Thompson appointed Gableman to the vacant post of district attorney of Ashland County.

Gableman was elected to a full term in this office in 2002, but resigned shortly after his election to accept an appointment as an administrative law judge in the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development.

Later that year, Gableman was appointed Wisconsin circuit court judge for Burnett County, by Governor Scott McCallum.

He was elected to a full term in the April 2003 general election, receiving 78% of the vote over Burnett County district attorney Kenneth L. Kutz.

In Burnett County, Gableman established an inmate community service program, a juvenile community service program, a drug and alcohol court, and a restorative justice program for which he served as chairman of the board for six years.

He also was an adjunct professor of law at Hamline University School of Law, teaching criminal procedure and professional responsibility.

In October 2007, Gableman announced he would run for Wisconsin Supreme Court, challenging incumbent justice Louis B. Butler.

Gableman described himself as a judicial conservative.

In the April 1, 2008, general election, Gableman narrowly defeated Butler and became the first challenger to defeat an incumbent Wisconsin supreme court justice since 1967.

Gableman's election in 2008 was seen as part of a trend of outside big-money interests becoming a major factor in state judiciary elections.

The Wisconsin Judicial Commission brought an ethics charge against Gableman.

The charges alleged that a campaign advertisement in which he accused Butler of working "to put criminals on the street" and accusing Butler of finding a "loophole" that resulted in the release of a child molester, was false and misleading.

Gableman claimed in the defense of his ad that his free speech rights were violated by the judicial conduct rule he was accused of breaking.

A three-judge panel was then charged with the preliminary investigation into whether the campaign ad violated the Wisconsin Code of Judicial Conduct.

Gableman received legal counsel from July 2008 to July 2010 from the Wisconsin law firm of Michael Best & Friedrich on a contingency fee basis.

He received the services from the law firm as it defended him against a separate ethics charge.

Gableman never declared the receipt of the services in his official disclosure statements.

Critics characterized the legal contingency-fee arrangement as "free" legal services, a characterization Michael Best & Friedrich rejected.

In November 2009, the panel unanimously recommended that the complaint against Gableman be dismissed.

Procedure required that the Wisconsin Supreme Court make the final determination as to whether there was an ethics violation.

When the court deadlocked 3-3, the commission stopped pursuing the case.

In January 2011, the group 9to5 Milwaukee filed an ethics complaint with the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board against Gableman for failing to recuse himself from a case in which he allegedly had a financial interest.

In 2017, Gableman said he would not run for re-election in 2018.

Following Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 United States presidential election, the defeated incumbent, Donald Trump, refused to concede, made claims of fraud and launched a campaign to challenge the results in a number of states, including Wisconsin.

Gableman injected himself into the discussion and suggested the election was "stolen" from Trump.

Following Biden's inauguration in 2021, Wisconsin Republicans hired Gableman to investigate the conduct of the 2020 United States presidential election in Wisconsin.