ICYMI: Brad Schimel Undermines Justice System, Defends January 6 Insurrectionists From the Comfort of Right-Wing Talk Radio
January 6, 2025
MADISON, WI - Far-right politician and candidate for Supreme Court Brad Schimel kicked off the new year in bizarre fashion last week when he took to right-wing talk radio to voluntarily defend the January 6 insurrectionists who assaulted police officers and cast doubt on the United States justice system, even going so far as to suggest that the courts can’t be trusted to be fair and impartial.
Schimel’s suggestion that the court system is too polarized to be trusted is the pot calling the kettle black. As Attorney General, Brad Schimel wasted millions of dollars on partisan efforts to restrict abortion care, led Wisconsin into a lawsuit to overturn the Affordable Care Act and rip away health care from over 260,000 Wisconsinites, and was accused of “blatantly politiciz[ing]” the office and dropping the ball on defending Wisconsinites’ best interests.
Read more about Brad Schimel’s hypocrisy from Ruth Conniff at the Wisconsin Examiner below:
Wisconsin Examiner: Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate comes to the defense of Jan. 6 insurrectionists
- As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to pardon the Jan. 6 rioters imprisoned for their role in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, one of the candidates running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court joined the campaign to rewrite the history of what happened that day, glossing over the offenses of the Jan. 6 defendants.
- Speaking with right-wing radio host Vicki McKenna on her iHeart Radio podcast on Thursday, former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, who is running in the April election for a seat on the state’s highest court, complained that the Jan. 6 defendants never got “a fair shot” in court and accused Democrats of “abusing the court system” for “political gain.”
- McKenna and Schimel agreed that Democrats are guilty of “lawfare” — political warfare via the courts. But it was Schimel who specifically brought up Jan. 6.
- “The same thing for these January 6th defendants who were all prosecuted in the Washington, D.C., district, which is overwhelmingly liberal,” Shimel continued. “This part of the manipulation is to go to districts like that. They would never take you, they would never take their prosecution in a district where you had a fair shot as a defendant.”
- Still, Schimel’s comments stand out. For a Supreme Court candidate to suggest that jury trials don’t work and that the whole U.S. system of justice is so politicized it can’t be trusted is deeply undermining of the very institution Schimel proposes to join.
- During the McKenna show, both McKenna and Schimel engaged in some familiar partisan liberal-bashing, casting aspersions on Dane County and suggesting that the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decisions allowing absentee ballot drop boxes to be used again and declaring the Republicans’ egregiously gerrymandered voting maps unconstitutional were merely political, not serious constitutional decisions.
- Both implied that courts dominated by conservative justices are fair and impartial and that only Democrats and liberals politicize the process.
- That’s pretty rich coming from Schimel who, as former Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s attorney general, was involved in a Christian conservative coalition’s plan to end federally protected abortion rights.
- Schimel made government transparency a major talking point in his campaign to be the state’s top lawyer, but then tried to hide records of his trip to a conference hosted by the controversial Alliance Defending Freedom, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled an anti-gay hate group. Schimel was there with his colleague at the state Department of Justice, attorney Micah Tseytlin, who, according to The New York Times, presented “his legal strategy to end Roe. … He proposed his idea for an abortion ban that set a limit earlier than 20 weeks to undercut Roe more openly.”
- It’s pretty obvious from Schimel’s political background that he is hardly the impartial, nonpartisan figure he claims to be. His insistence that the Jan. 6 defendants couldn’t get fair treatment in a Washington, D.C., courtroom is a big clue. In our increasingly toxic political atmosphere, it’s easy to forget that there are other kinds of judges, who listen to the evidence and make clear-eyed decisions based on the law, not partisanship.
