Michael Gableman should be disbarred — he’s earned it
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is weighing appropriate discipline for former Justice Michael Gableman’s violation of ethical rules that bind all attorneys.
The court must set aside any discomfort about judging a former colleague and revoke Gableman’s law license. Any decision short of the maximum sanction available will undermine the rule of law.
This bold conclusion is unavoidable in light of Gableman’s blunderbuss tactics, intimidation attempts, abundant falsehoods and attempt to imprison elected officials on false premises.
Every lawyer swears an oath to support the U.S. and the Wisconsin constitutions, to follow the law, to serve clients fairly and to follow the ethical rules. Our judicial system depends on lawyers and judges dealing with one another in honest, ethical ways. Without that foundation, our adversarial system of justice cannot work.
In just over a year, Gableman violated most clauses in the Wisconsin attorney’s oath.
In 2021, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, hired Gableman to spearhead an investigation into Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential election. The investigation was created at the insistence of then-former President Donald Trump.
Gableman was, as even Vos later conceded, a poor choice for this role. Gableman admitted that he didn’t know how Wisconsin elections work and spent his early weeks with conspiracy theorists. He later admitted in court that this 60-day period resulted in “no substantive work.”
This beginning was representative of the shambolic, dishonest and destructive campaign against Wisconsin’s democracy that Gableman conducted at taxpayer expense. Along the way, Gableman repeatedly misled the public and elected officials, abused the subpoena process, attempted to jail the mayors of Green Bay and Madison, lied to the court, demeaning a lawyer and a circuit court judge, destroyed public records and harassed nursing home residents.
Gableman’s investigation, initially contracted for five months, lasted more than a year and cost taxpayers over $2 million. It reached an ignominious end when Gableman recorded a robocall supporting a primary challenge to Vos, leading Vos to fire him.
Last year, the Office of Lawyer Regulation (OLR) filed a disciplinary complaint against Gableman, alleging 10 violations of the ethical rules that bind Wisconsin lawyers. OLR admitted its complaint excluded “additional acts of misconduct” that “demonstrate [Gableman’s] disregard for the rules of professional conduct.”
Gableman initially denied any misconduct and refused to answer questions under oath. But after he was ordered to sit for a deposition and as a public evidentiary hearing drew closer, Gableman changed his tune. He conceded he had no defense to the charges by pleading no contest, and OLR canceled the hearing, settling for an agreed recommendation that Gableman’s law license be suspended for three years.
The recommendation is now before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. A three-year suspension is wholly insufficient for the breadth and the substance of Gableman’s ethical violations. It would also require ignoring binding precedent that, where a lawyer commits multiple ethical violations, the court looks to past cases to assess fitting sanctions for each violation and then adds those sanctions together to reach a cumulative total.
OLR’s briefing in this case correctly cites that precedent, and it correctly notes that each of several counts in the complaint independently support a three-year suspension. But it fails to address what those separate sanctions add up to.
The Supreme Court can, and often does, depart upward from a recommended sanction, even where the parties have reached an agreement. This case demands such a departure.
Applying precedent by adding the sanctions for each of the 10 violations in the complaint yields a much heavier sanction than the recommended three-year suspension. Gableman’s past roles as a judge and a justice make his wholesale abandonment of ethical rules all the more unacceptable. Additionally, the consequences of his actions — which sowed discord and distrust in the electoral process, amplifying lies and conspiracy theories — must be a factor.
Gableman’s misconduct was an attack on the fabric of our democracy. The Supreme Court has an obligation to impose the maximum available sanction — revoking Gableman’s license to practice law. Anything less would not only defy binding precedent but also send the message that our justice system will tolerate assaults against democracy.
By Jeff Mandell, General Counsel. December 17, 2025.