A judge in Wisconsin held state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in contempt of court for allegedly failing to produce emails and text messages related to an investigation he ordered into the 2020 election.
Bailey-Rihn told Vos and the Assembly to turn over records within 14 days and to pay $1,000 per day if they fail to do that. They also will have to pay some of American Oversight’s legal bills, the judge said.
Vos attorney Ronald Stadler told Bailey-Rihn a week ago that the work to retrieve Vos’s emails from his legislative account was ongoing and he would need up to two weeks to review whatever was found. Stadler also said he had an expert witness who would testify that deleted text messages couldn’t be recovered.
The judge further wrote, “Vos did not tell that contractor which records to produce, did not ask any of the other contractors to produce records, and did not even review the records ultimately received. Still worse, the assembly did nothing at all.”
Vos’s office didn’t respond by press time to a request for comment.
“I still believe that the Constitution and my oath that I took as an elected official does not allow me to decertify any election, whether I want to or not,” Vos told reporters in Madison. “That’s not going to happen.”
Some Republicans in the state, however, said at the time that they believed Vos’s assertions were incorrect.
“This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue, and I think some of the people inside that are accountable are in that room right now,” state Rep. Timothy Ramthun, a Republican, told NBC15 in mid-March. “I think those people don’t want to see closure on this. That’s why they’re dragging us all along.”
