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Dishonorable resignation
The veterans board chair resigned following charges of possessing child porn
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Wisconsin Veterans Board Chair Curtis Schmitt Jr. is resigning after calls for him to leave his post following charges of possessing child pornography.
Schmitt yesterday issued Gov. Tony Evers a handwritten letter of resignation cast on an otherwise blank sheet of paper and penned with blue ink in all capital letters.
The news came just hours after GOP guv candidate Kevin Nicholson called on Evers to forcibly remove Schmitt from his post.
The guv appointed Schmitt in 2019 to serve a 4-year term.
Schmitt 38, of Franklin, pleaded not guilty to the three felony charges filed against him Jan. 23. He was charged in Milwaukee County. He told police he was addicted to adult pornography and sometimes received and downloaded child pornography, the Associated Press reported.
Nicholson, a Marine veteran and former Wisconsin Board of Veterans Affairs member, in a letter to Evers said the guv should consider his correspondence a formal complaint by a resident taxpayer. Nicholson said that would allow Evers to forcibly remove Schmitt from his position.
Conservative attorney says election decertification has no purpose
Conservative Attorney James Bopp told an Assembly committee efforts to decertify the results of the last presidential election in Wisconsin serve “zero legal purpose.”
Bopp, who has represented former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman during his investigation into the last election, told an Assembly Elections and Campaigns public hearing yesterday the chance to decertify passed after Jan. 6 last year.
Gableman has asked lawmakers to “take a hard look” at decertifying the results of that election. Bopp led multiple lawsuits seeking to disqualify hundreds of thousands of votes from predominantly Democratic cities shortly after the last election.
“You had the authority in late November, alright? If you felt that the election was so corrupt, and that the results needed to be, you needed to intervene, you could have intervened,” he said. “You had the power under the Constitution, and that would have been respected; and certified your own electors.”
Gableman attended the hearing, but did not speak. Gubernatorial candidate and Rep. Tim Ramthun, R-Campbellsport, and former Menomonee Falls Village President Jefferson Davis were among those attending the hearing who have advocated for decertification.
Bopp added he feels there were significant irregularities with the last presidential election and he’s upset about it too, but seeking to decertify the results is a fruitless endeavor.
WI GOP House delegation attempts to submit new Congessional maps
Wisconsin’s GOP members of Congress have asked state justices to give them the chance to propose a new map after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected their challenge.
Wednesday’s filing came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, denied House Republicans’ request to overturn Gov. Tony Evers’ map, which the state justices approved earlier this month.
In that 4-3 ruling, the state Supreme Court picked Evers’ map for Wisconsin’s congressional boundaries, finding it most closely followed the core retention principle the justices used to evaluate the proposals that had been submitted. Yesterday’s motion to reconsider seeks the chance to submit a new map that Republicans argue would follow the core retention principle more closely than Evers’ proposal did.
The court in November told the parties to submit maps that followed a “least change” approach to the lines Republicans drew in 2011. It then selected Evers’ map because it moved fewer people from their current districts than the GOP plan.
Prior to this month’s ruling selecting Evers’ map, the court rejected an attempt by the House Republicans to amend the map that had already been submitted.
In yesterday’s filing, House Republicans argued it would take just an hour to draw a new map that better followed the core retention principle than Evers’ proposal.
Evers names new pardon board members, issues new pardons
Gov. Tony Evers appointed two new members to his Pardon Advisory Board and issued 33 pardons.
That adds up to 449 pardons during his time in the East Wing.
Of the 33 new pardons, the majority pertain to drug offenses and theft.
Evers is expected to exceed former Democratic Gov. Patrick Lucey’s 457 pardons well before the end of the year.
According to the Legislative Reference Bureau, GOP Gov. Julius Heil issued over 900 pardons during his time in office, including 486 in his first term from 1939 to 1940. LRB told WisPolitics.com it is still in the process of compiling pardon records as far back as 1850.
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