Since Wisconsin Speaker Robin Vos was having difficulty to get people on board with his threat to impeach Justice Janet Protasiewicz, he decided to bring aboard a panel of former State Supreme Court Justices to look into the possibility of an impeachment and give guidance what to look like. Vos played this panel close to his chest and didn't volunteer any information about said panel.
It was later discovered that former Justice David Prosser was one of the people Vos brought on board to do this. It looked like a foregone conclusion on how things would turn out. Prosser, when he was on the bench, prided himself as being a "rubber stamp" for Scott Walker and the Republicans. He had even written the opinion supporting Act 10, the union busting law, without reading any of the briefs or doing any legal research.
Furthermore, Prosser is no stranger to judicial ethical problems. While a Justice, he had called then Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson a "bitch" and threatened to destroy her. He even went so far as to physically attack and strangle Justice Ann Walsh Bradley.
Prosser sent his opinion letter to Vos on Friday. Surprisingly, he said in no unequivocal terms that there should be no impeachment
“In my view, ‘corrupt conduct’ is not a term that is open to a mere political grievance,” Prosser wrote in the email to Vos. “If that were the case, legislative bodies could be trading questionable impeachments with considerable frequency.”
"To sum up my views, there should be no effort to impeach Justice Protasiewicz on anything we know now,” he wrote. “Impeachment is so serious, severe, and rare that it should not be considered unless the subject has committed a crime, or the subject has committed indisputable ‘corrupt conduct’ while ‘in office.’”
Prosser then went off the legal path and warned Vos that there would be a horrible political backlash should they try to do an impeachment just because of a political grievance.
To add to Vos' woes, the government watchdog group, American Oversight, had filed a lawsuit against Vos and his mystery panel, claiming that they were in violation of open meetings laws. There had been a 20-day waiting period to give the local district attorney a chance to investigate. That waiting period ended Monday.
They claim that Prosser's letter is proof that their lawsuit was needed:
A spokeswoman for American Oversight said the group is not interpreting the messages as evidence of just two justices being involved in the research of impeachment.
"... there is still a lot we don’t know about the panel’s work or its makeup. I’m hopeful that our work will continue to bring more information to light, including knowing for sure who else is involved," Amanda Teuscher, spokeswoman for American Oversight, said.
It should be noted that Vos has tangled with American Oversight before, regarding his fraudit of the 2020 elections. Vos' incompetence and corruption has cost taxpayers over $3 million on just that one issue.
And to just think, now that Protasiewicz refused to recuse herself, and the Supreme Court agreed to accept one of the redistricting cases, both parties have to have their first official filings in by Monday, October 16th.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
