Emails, text messages and other documents gathered and produced by a $676,000 taxpayer-funded review of the 2020 election are routinely being deleted by the former state Supreme Court justice at the probe’s helm, new court documents show.
An attorney representing Michael Gableman in a lawsuit seeking records related to Gableman’s election review told the plaintiff, liberal group American Oversight, that Gableman his staff in the Assembly Office of Special Counsel deletes records deemed “irrelevant or useless.”
The practice is a violation of state law, according to the Legislature’s own attorneys.
“When a document comes to the OSC, the OSC evaluates whether the document is of use to the investigation. If it is, that document is downloaded and kept for further investigation, or for use in the OSC’s reports and recommendations. If the document is irrelevant or useless to the investigation, the OSC deletes that document,” Gableman attorney James Bopp wrote in a letter dated April 8 to American Oversight attorneys.