Judge rules Wisconsin election investigator must pay legal fees of watchdog group

A federal judge on Monday ordered an investigator looking into the results of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin to pay the legal fees of American Oversight after the watchdog group filed several lawsuits seeking records on its activities.

The Office of Special Counsel, whom Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos directed to conduct the probe, must pay American Oversights legal fees in the amount of $163,000, according to the Epoch Times. American Oversight alleged that the OSC, under the leadership of former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, failed to adequately comply with its open records requests.

Wisconsin taxpayers will bear the brunt of the expense, as they did with the initial cost of the investigation. The outlet put the probe's total expenses at over $1 million.

"The office responsible for Wisconsin’s partisan election review has deleted records that don’t suit the false election-fraud narrative. Access to these records is essential for accountability," the group posted on Twitter on Monday. "We’re fighting to stop any more records from being destroyed."

Wisconsin was one of several states that faced accusations of fraud and electoral mismanagement during the 2020 presidential election, alongside Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. Then-candidate Donald Trump won the state in 2016, but narrowly lost it to now-President Joe Biden in 2020.