Voss first hired Michael Gableman in July 2021 as a special counsel under pressure from former President Donald Trump and his allies to reconsider his 2020 loss in the state, but relations between the Republican lawmaker and Gableman soured after Voss refused requests to decertify President Joe Biden’s state victory.
Voss’ move to end the investigation came just days after he survived a primary challenge from an opponent Trump and Gableman had endorsed.
“After many members of our group have contacted me over the past several days, it is not clear to me that we have only one choice in this matter, and that is to close the Office of the Special Counsel,” Voss said in a statement.
CNN has reached out to Gableman’s office and his attorney.
The Associated Press first reported Gableman’s firing.
In total, the cost of the investigation exceeded $1 million.
The partisan review, part of a nationwide effort by Republicans to cast doubt on Biden’s victory, drew criticism from the start. Months before he was hired, Gableman appeared at a rally on November 7, 2020, and said he believed the Wisconsin election had been stolen. Gableman’s blunders and the extreme legal steps taken during the investigation prompted calls for the review to be halted.
During the investigation, he threatened with jail local officials who refused to answer his questions in private interviews.
And a memo uncovered by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel earlier this year appears to indicate that Gableman’s team is looking into the backgrounds of state employees. One case — part of a document titled “Cross Pollinators” and posted on the special counsel’s website — concluded that a Milwaukee city employee was likely a Democrat because she “has a weird nose ring,” plays video games, “loves nature and snakes” and lives with her boyfriend, although they are not married. The Gableman investigation also faces several lawsuits related to open records requests.
State Sen. Melissa Agard, a Democrat who sits on the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, said there should be a formal audit of the investigation, which she said was authorized to spend more than $1.3 million.
“After many other analyzes of the 2020 Wisconsin election, there have been no demonstrations of widespread or significant fraud that affected the outcome of our election,” Agard said in a written statement. “Gableman has been skimming the taxpayers’ dime for over a year.”
Biden won Wisconsin by nearly 21,000 votes in 2020, a victory that survived numerous lawsuits and election reviews.
(A recent ruling by the conservative majority on the state Supreme Court concluded that most drop-in ballot boxes — which were widely used in the 2020 election during the height of the pandemic — are prohibited. But the ruling did not change the outcome of this year’s contests .)
Wisconsin is a key battleground state with high-stakes races in November. The state’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, is running for a second term amid a challenge from Trump-backed GOP candidate Tim Michels. And in a race that could help determine which party controls the Senate, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson will face Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, a Democrat.
Evers has repeatedly vetoed bills passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature that seek to overhaul the state’s voting rules.
In his statement Friday, Voss said the Gableman investigation — along with a separate report from the Legislative Audit Office — “clearly indicates concern and issues with the 2020 election.”
But he said Republicans should focus on electing “a Republican governor in November so we can pass the bills that Governor Evers vetoed.”
This story has been updated with additional background information.
CNN’s Andy Rose and Natalie Anders contributed to this story.
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