Illustration by Melissa Lee Johnson
Negative stories blasting Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel’s work as blatantly partisan, wasteful, shoddy, inept and error-riddled are not hard to find. Progressive news sources have called on him to resign, and recently one labeled him the “Worst Attorney General in Wisconsin History.” But Progressives and Democrats aren’t the only ones horrified by the incompetent mess and partisan machine Brad Schimel has sought to make of the Department of Justice (DOJ) in his four years as attorney general.
Here are a few examples of Brad Schimel’s actions where independent, neutral and even Republican observers take issue with his performance as Wisconsin’s attorney general.
Botching a Lincoln Hills Investigation
There has been a great deal of criticism of Schimel’s and Gov. Scott Walker’s work on this—the most damning from the governor’s former Corrections Secretary Ed Wall, who says Schimel “completely botched” the investigation into prisoner abuse, dangers and mismanagement at the troubled teen prison north of Wausau. He asserts Schimel was “completely disconnected,” and the DOJ investigation was “put on the back burner,” ignoring Wall’s request for more resources. Wall was eventually fired by Schimel, who now claims Wall is retaliating. Yet further proof of Schimel’s disregard for staff and youth at Lincoln Hills comes from the fact the Federal Bureau of Investigations has had to step in and take over the probe, which Schimel gave up.
Suppressing Votes
Schimel zealously supports vote-suppressing measures that make it a hardship for many students, people of color, low-income residents and the elderly to vote. He’s vigorously defends photo ID requirements, gerrymandering and a Republican law to cut down on early voting and curtail voting sites, targeting Madison and Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called what Schimel was doing “defending the indefensible,” adding: “We urge Schimel to stop defending this blatantly partisan effort to tamp down the votes of the opposing party.” U.S. District Judge James Peterson agreed.
Schimel also showed his ineptitude (to the chagrin of his Republican colleagues) when he blurted out the GOP’s dishonorable intentions to rig elections on WISN-AM, admitting the fact that Donald Trump and Ron Johnson would not have won their respective races for president and senator in Wisconsin without its photo-ID law. On gerrymandering, Republican critics of the practice Schimel defends include Ohio Gov. John Kasich and late Sen. John McCain of Arizona. “From our vantage point, we see wasted votes and silenced voices. We see hidden power,” Kasich and McCain wrote in a U.S. Supreme Court brief.
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Bungling John Doe Investigations
Further proof, were any needed, that Schimel functions as Walker’s attorney rather than serving the people of Wisconsin is the vigor with which he pursued leaks on the investigations into potential illegal campaign coordination by Walker’s team during the recall election. The leaks led to shocking revelations of coordination, but Schimel brushed those aside. Instead, he blundered multiple times in his zeal to name the whistleblower.
Indeed, Schimel’s report was so error-riddled that he had to correct it multiple times and was called out in a seven-page letter by the Republican and Democratic heads of the Ethics Commission. He also got a harsh spanking from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel publisher George Stanley in the newspaper, noting that “the reasons Schimel gave for deleting the inaccurate information were as false as the [content] itself.”
Still, Schimel stood by his report even while being forced to correct it, and he disclosed information from the secret probe—including 35 names—making himself a “leaker.” He also confused the two John Doe probes and even wrongly asserted there was a John Doe III. Walker might want a new lawyer.
Spending Big on Swag
From gold-plated coins with his motto “KAED” (“Kicking Ass Every Day”) to pistol cases, golf towels and custom-made fortune cookies, Schimel has spent $83,000 on self-promotional items. Schimel is his own critic here, having to tell the legislature’s budget committee that he didn’t know the cost and “wouldn’t do it that way again.”
Earning the Nickname ‘Backlog Brad’
It’s easy to lose count of the number of times Schimel has falsely declared “mission accomplished,” saying the state’s plethora of backlogged rape kits has been completely tested— doing so again in just the last few weeks. In April 2017, it was one of just seven “Pants on Fire” ratings given by PolitiFact Wisconsin. In his first two years in office, Schimel had only tested nine but claimed it was hundreds and was called out for it by the Green Bay Press Gazette. Despite securing a $7 million grant for tests, there are still more than a thousand with results still pending. No wonder he got the moniker “Backlog Brad.”
As an attorney general who ran for office saying he would “curb crimes against women,” his negligence does not stop with his callous attitude that may allow rapists to walk the streets. The time prosecutors wait for test results has doubled under Schimel, including DNA and toxicology reports. One delay resulted in a repeat drunken driver killing a man changing his tire along a highway while prosecutors were waiting for the lab to complete the blood tests.
Issuing Gag Orders
DOJ employees all must sign broad non-disclosure agreements that never expire and were put in place with suspect timing tied to Josh Kaul’s announcement he was running against Schimel and publication of Wall’s tell-all book on Schimel’s failures at the Lincoln Hills School. In 2015, Schimel voted to stop employees of the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands from discussing the words “climate change.” (He did later soften that stance.) This caused the secretary of the board to quit after 11 years of service. Speaking of things Schimel didn’t want made public, he fought hard to keep law enforcement training videos he made from being released under the open records law.
Fighting Against Environmental and Consumer Protections
Maplight is a national nonprofit organization that tracks money’s influences on politics (in both parties). It sent an employee to Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) conferences who learned it hosts an on-line bulletin board it calls the “Briefing Room,” where big donors like the National Rifle Association (NRA) or pharmaceutical companies can post policy advice to Republican attorneys general.
Maplight sat in on a talk by former Deputy Attorney General Andy Cook (now a lobbyist) that opened the curtain on how Schimel operates Wisconsin’s Department of Justice. According to Maplight, Cook described how Schimel forced out the longtime director of its environmental protection unit. “He worked with environmental groups behind the scenes. And we had to, quite frankly, remove him after a while,” Cook reportedly told RAGA. “And we had one person in our office watch every case that unit was doing.”
Cook also warned participants that, in Wisconsin, we “paid very close attention to what was going on in consumer protection and watched every case going through.” The former Nebraska attorney general said he enjoys taking clients he now lobbies for to Schimel because “Schimel’s been a pro at this. I show up with my client… he looks at my client and says, ‘Jon Bruning’s the best representative you could possibly bring in here!’ He makes me look good, and I appreciate it.”
Notably, Schimel has settled cases with polluters like 3M with no fines, led the fight against environmental clean-air standards and blocked the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources from protecting drinking water with regulations on high-capacity wells. Kaul regularly points out that fines for polluters were more than halved between Schimel and his Republican predecessor, J.B. Van Hollen.
Politicizing His Office
The day Brad Schimel took his oath of office in January 2015, he made what he labeled a “solemn promise” to put partisan politics aside. Unfortunately, while he spoke this soundbite, he was also welcoming the NRA into his office and hiring a Walmart and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce lobbyist as his deputy. Things have gone ever further downhill from there. So far downhill, in fact, that 45 former DOJ assistant attorneys general who served under both Democrats and Republicans with a cumulative 900 years of service sent out an open letter on Schimel saying he puts partisan politics before the public good.
It begins: “The Wisconsin attorney general’s office is a mess. The current attorney general, Brad Schimel, has blatantly politicized the office, dropped the ball on his role as the lead crime fighter in Wisconsin and abdicated the attorney general’s traditional role as ‘the people’s lawyer’ representing Wisconsin citizens’ interests in criminal and civil matters alike.”
It ends with a statement that pretty much sums up the whole picture: “Brad Schimel does not merit a second term as attorney general.”
