Months after a decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court effectively ended former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, the bitter clingers to the conspiracy theories refuse to forgive.
WISN/WIBA talk show host Vicki McKenna reported on Friday’s program that “a citizen” has filed a complaint against Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn for statements he made defending his opinion against the Trump campaign’s lawsuit.
“It’s obviously written by a citizen, a lawyer didn’t write this,” McKenna said in a conversation with Jim Troupis, the lawyer for Trump’s failed lawsuit in Wisconsin and a supporter of the theory the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
“But it actually gets to an important problem,” McKenna continued. “Brian Hagedorn, when the case was live, meaning that it was not concluded, the Trump campaign had opportunities to go before the United States Supreme Court to seek other redress, Brian Hagedorn gave multiple interviews to multiple news outlets trashing a case he claimed he didn’t think should even be heard because of latches.”
McKenna posted the complaint on social media, including Twitter, on Thursday. The name of the complainant was withheld by McKenna even though the form indicates he or she was willing to make their name public.
An inquiry is being sent to the Wisconsin Judicial Commission regarding the status of the complaint which shows being filed December 23, 2020.
The complaint, such as it is, accuses Hagedorn of “yapping his mouth like a 5th grader on the playground.” It also accuses Hagedorn of “wantoningly” {sic} speaking to The New York Times. For the accompanying documentation, the complainant lists a number of media outlets and says they can be found on Google. Among the media sources listed, the “Yaho News Feed” and “The Milwaukee Journal Sentinal.”
The complainant asks of the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, “Due to Hagedorn’s position I ask this Council to take immediate action with a good sized penalty against him so he learns to shut his mouth – as he is required to do I’ll point out – and have respect for the judicial.”
Finally, the complaint states, “Mr. Hagedorn – did you ask yourself why none of the other justices {spoke to} the media like you did? Show some class.”
“Whether it is a citizen filing a complaint or a lawyer filing a complaint, that is something the Wisconsin Judicial Commission should take seriously,” McKenna said.
RightWisconsin consulted with noted election law attorney Michael Maistelman, who has experience filing a complaint with the Judicial Commission, about the merits of the complaint.
“The complaint is pure poppycock, and I will withhold my opinion of the anonymous complainant as I have small children around me,” Maistelman said. “The Trump ilk are mad that Justice Hagedorn applied the facts, or lack thereof, to the law, which is what every other court in the United States did when Trump attempted to usurp the election results.”
Maistelman, who mostly represents Democrats in election cases but has represented Republicans and RightWisconsin in the past, defended the Supreme Court Justice from the charge he behaved unethically.
“I do not agree with Justice Hagedorn on all of his decisions,” Maistelman said. “However, he is thoughtful, forthright, and respectful of the rule of law.”
The Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision written by Justice Brian Hagedorn, rejected the Trump lawsuit in December by saying that the voters should not be harmed by the failure of the campaign to challenge these practices prior to the election.
“The Campaign waited until after the election to raise selective challenges that could have been raised long before the election,” Hagedorn wrote. “We conclude the challenge to indefinitely confined voter ballots is without merit, and that laches bars relief on the remaining three categories of challenged ballots.”
After Hagedorn wrote the majority opinion for the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejecting Trump’s effort to throw out Wisconsin’s election results, the Supreme Court Justice came under heavy criticism from pro-Trump Republicans and Trump himself. Hagedorn gave a number of media interviews commenting on the personal attacks.
In an interview with the New York Times, Hagedorn described the reaction his opinion received:
Talk radio in Wisconsin, particularly on the conservative side, is very prominent. I turned on the radio one morning driving to work and heard what a horrible person I was. So it’s hard to miss it.
Yes, I’ve been called a traitor. I’ve been called a liar. I’ve been called a fraud. I’ve been asked if I’m being paid off by the Chinese Communist Party. I’ve been told I might be tried for treason by a military tribunal. Sure, I’ve gotten lots of interesting and sometimes dark messages.
“I knew I’d certainly get an earful from some people who disagreed with my votes,” Hagedorn said in an interview with WISN TV in Milwaukee. “But I’m doing the best I can as faithful as I can to follow the law regardless of politics.”
The Supreme Court Justice also commented on the personal toll resulting from his decision.
“I’ve definitely had some extra police protection,” Hagedorn told WISN TV. “Not just me but some of the justices because of some of the things directed our way. I’m not aware of any specific death threats necessarily. There are some things that are concerning and not fun as a father of five children to hear. It’s been the case that my 12-year-old daughter asked me at one point, ‘Dad can we play in the front yard today or should we play in the back yard?’”
The case was finished in Wisconsin, but Trump lawyer Troupis complained to McKenna that the appeal (ultimately rejected) to the U.S. Supreme Court was still pending when Hagedorn spoke to the media. Troupis gave a false analogy of a divorce case to try to defend his position:
“…And you lost a ruling by the court. Now the case is still there, but you lost a ruling by the court,” Troupis said. “Now the newspaper calls up the judge. The judge picks up the phone and discusses his attitude about your case that he still has.”
Except, Hagedorn was discussing the ruling on a case that was no longer before the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the reaction of talk radio and pro-Trump Republicans to his written opinion.
Troupis, however, claims the Trump campaign was considering asking the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision even though the Trump campaign, represented by Troupis, lost twice at the Supreme Court and other election challenges supporting the Trump campaign were also defeated at the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Simultaneously, the Trump campaign was losing in nearly every court, federal or state, across the country.
But even Troupis concedes that the complaint is unlikely to result in any action against Hagedorn. “One of the problems, of course, is that ultimately the matter ends up in front of the Court itself,” Troupis said in the interview. “It is very difficult to look a colleague in the eye and say, we think you have misbehaved.”
