A who's who guide to the Republican review of Wisconsin's 2020 presidential election

MADISON – The Republican review of Wisconsin’s election is being conducted by those who appear to have already made up their minds.

Leading it is former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who a year ago claimed without evidence the election was stolen. He’s hired a team that has made similar comments or otherwise questioned Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin.

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Recounts and courts have confirmed Biden’s victory over Donald Trump, but Assembly Republicans have said more review is warranted. They are using $676,000 in taxpayer money to fund Gableman’s review.

Here's a look at who's involved.

Robin Vos

The longtime speaker of the Assembly launched the review in May. He has taken criticism from Democrats who say he is undermining voters’ confidence in the election and some Republicans who say he isn’t willing to go far enough with the review.

Michael Gableman

Gableman, who served as a Supreme Court justice from 2008 to 2018, was hired by Vos in June. He has long been involved in Republican politics and at a December 2020 pro-Trump rally claimed without evidence that the election was stolen — and that GOP legislative leaders were responsible for letting it happen.

In October, Gableman acknowledged he does not have "a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work."

Andrew Kloster

Kloster worked as an attorney for the Trump administration before becoming Gableman’s chief of staff. Last year, he served as a Republican election observer in Green Bay and raised complaints about how the election was conducted there.

Like Gableman, Kloster baselessly claimed before he joined Gableman’s team that the election was stolen. In an online post, he also wrote that conservatives need to have “our own captured DA offices to let our boys off the hook.”

Carol Matheis

A California-based attorney, Matheis for a time would not reveal her full name to the public or officials she was contacting about Gableman’s review. In response to questions from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in November, Gableman’s office confirmed the attorney going by the name “Carol M.” was Matheis.

She left Gableman's office in mid-December.

Clint Lancaster

Lancaster is an attorney from Arkansas who represented the Trump campaign for the recount it demanded in Dane County. Separately, Lancaster represented a woman who successfully sued the president’s son, Hunter Biden, for child support.

Gableman revealed in November that he had hired Lancaster. He is paying him $10,000 a month — twice as much as what he’s paying Kloster and Matheis.

Ron Heuer

Heuer is the chairman of the Kewaunee County Republican Party and president of the Wisconsin Voters Alliance. The voters alliance filed three lawsuits over the election, including two that sought to overturn the results. All three lawsuits failed.

Gableman hired Heuer in October and said he is looking into how voting was conducted at nursing homes. Heuer recently told the Journal Sentinel he does not believe there were problems with voting machines in Wisconsin, even as some conservatives falsely assert that they were hacked.

Heuer has taken to Facebook over the last year to post messages and videos that falsely suggest COVID-19 is a hoax, mock Michelle Obama for her weight and credit white people with ending slavery.

Gary Wait

Wait served as a police officer in Highland Park, Illinois, in the 1970s before becoming a private investigator. Gableman recently disclosed that Wait had worked for him in September and October.

Before he worked for Gableman, Wait helped lead a group of private individuals who conducted their own review of the election.

Former police officers

Vos in May hired former Milwaukee Detective Mike Sandvick and former Eau Claire Sgt. Steven Page to work on the election review. They quit within weeks of taking the jobs.

More recently, Gableman hired three former Milwaukee police detectives, Thomas Obregon, Edward Chaim and Neil Saxton, to assist him. Saxton left after three weeks.

Zakory Niemierowicz

A recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Niemierowicz has assisted Gableman with administrative matters.

Unknown data analyst

Gableman has declined to name a data analyst who started working for him on Nov. 1 “to protect his best interests with his full-time employer." The analyst is “creating timelines and information webs” for the review, Gableman told the Assembly Elections Committee.

Nate Cain

Cain is the owner of the West Virginia computer firm Cain & Associates. He was paid about $7,500 to educate Gableman’s team about technical issues and to help Gableman consider the attributes of vendors, according to Cain.

Cain last year falsely told a conservative YouTube host that it was statistically impossible for Biden to get as many votes as he did among the ballots that were counted latest. He also said the country could erupt into a civil war if the election was not audited.

Erick Kaardal

Kaardal is an attorney with the Minneapolis law firm Mohrman, Kaardal and Erickson who has worked with the conservative Thomas More Society’s Amistad Project.

Working with Heuer, Kaardal has spearheaded legal challenges to grants Wisconsin cities received from the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life to help them run their elections. Courts and the state Elections Commission have thrown out his challenges.

A federal judge in one of the cases said the lawsuit was so meritless that Kaardal should be considered for professional sanctions.

Gableman is sharing office space in Brookfield with Kaardal’s firm and the Thomas More Society.

Peter Bernegger

Bernegger, who was sent to federal prison after he was convicted of mail fraud and bank fraud in 2009, this year worked closely with Gary Wait to look into the election on their own. They gathered copies of ballots from across the state — in some cases by visiting clerks’ offices to scan copies of them.

In addition to working with Wait, Bernegger has met with Gableman about his views on the election, according to Cain.

Harry Wait

Harry Wait is president of the conservative Racine County group Honest Open Transparent Government. He has passed on information and messages to Gableman from others who are critical of how the election was conducted. He is the brother of Gary Wait.

Mike Lindell

Lindell is the chief executive officer of MyPillow, a cheerleader for Trump and a purveyor of false, often outlandish claims about the election.

He hosted a roundly mocked forum on election hacking in August that Gableman attended. Lindell later sent files to Gableman, according to emails that have been released under the state’s open records law.

Shiva Ayyadurai

Shiva Ayyadurai, who appeared at Lindell’s forum, has discussed the election with Gableman, according to Cain and Harry Wait, Gary Wait's brother.

In a podcast interview during Lindell’s event, Ayyadurai suggested that votes had been taken away from Trump in a way that was meant to give a nod to the comedic science fiction novel "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy."

Ayyadurai lost a Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts last year. Afterward, he falsely claimed the state had destroyed over a million ballots.

Douglas Frank

The chairman of the math and science department at an Ohio school, Frank appeared at Lindell’s event. Frank, who over the last year has made false claims about the manipulation of election information, later met with Gableman, according to Cain.

Frank recently falsely told the Assembly Elections Committee that elections officials did not know the names of who voted in 2020. That information is readily available from the state.

James Bopp

Gableman has retained Bopp, an attorney from Indiana, to help fight a lawsuit filed by Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul. The attorney general argues some of the subpoenas Gableman has issued are invalid.

As general counsel for the conservative group True the Vote, Bopp filed lawsuits last year challenging the results in Wisconsin and three other states. He withdrew them within days and a donor who funded the lawsuits is now trying to recover his money.

Bopp has developed a national reputation for fighting abortion and campaign finance laws. About a decade ago, he defended Gableman when he was accused of violating the ethics code for judges by lying in a campaign ad. Gableman did not face discipline in that case because the state Supreme Court split 3-3 on whether he had violated ethics rules.

Michael Dean

Dean is a Brookfield attorney who is working with Bopp to keep Gableman’s subpoenas in place. He has long been involved in conservative legal fights and last year was part of a lawsuit that claimed without evidence that voting machines were hacked by foreigners. A judge quickly threw out the case.

David Craig

A former state senator, Craig is an attorney helping Dean and Bopp with the lawsuit over the subpoenas.

Kevin Scott

Scott is an attorney assisting Gableman with a lawsuit that seeks to jail the mayors of Madison and Green Bay if they don’t sit for interviews about the election. Separately, Scott represents a man who has sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission over its policies for voting from nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Janel Brandtjen

Brandtjen, a Republican state representative from Menomonee Falls, is the chairwoman of the Assembly Elections Committee. Gableman is ostensibly working for her committee and has appeared before it twice, but Brandtjen said in October that he had not been consulting with her.

Brandtjen was among a group of four Wisconsin Republican legislators to tour Arizona's controversial review of ballots in Maricopa County. The audit drew criticism from around the country, including from some Republicans.

Timothy Ramthun

Ramthun is a Republican from Campbellsport serving his second term in the Assembly. He has made numerous false claims about the election and has filed a resolution to revoke the state’s electoral votes for Biden even though doing so is impossible legally.

Ramthun attended Lindell’s forum and has had some talks with Gableman.

Contact Patrick Marley at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @patrickdmarley.

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About this feature

This is a weekly feature for online and Sunday print readers delving into an issue in the news and explaining the actions of policymakers. Email suggestions for future topics to [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: A who's who guide in Wisconsin's partisan election review