Vos still considering impeaching Janet Protasiewicz despite two-thirds of his panel advising against it

Two members of the impeachment panel formed of former conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justices to explore the criteria needed to remove Justice Janet Protasiewicz from office have advised against impeachment.

Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Jon Wilcox told the Associated Press’ Scott Bauer that he does not support impeaching Protasiewicz.

“I do not favor impeachment,” Wilcox said in a phone interview. “Impeachment is something people have been throwing around all the time. But I think it’s for very serious things.”

Wilcox’s opinion is also shared by former Justice David Prosser, who wrote an email advising against impeachment to Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R). The liberal watchdog group American Oversight obtained the email through an open records request and published it Tuesday.

“To sum up my views, there should be no effort to impeach Justice Protasiewicz on anything we know now,” Prosser wrote. “Impeachment is so serious, severe, and rare that it should not be considered unless the subject has committed a crime, or the subject has committed indisputable ‘corrupt conduct’ while ‘in office.’”

Despite the opinion of the panel he created, and the opinion of most voters in the state, Vos said at a press conference Thursday that impeaching Protasiewicz is still a move he is considering.

“No, absolutely not,” Vos said when directly asked if impeachment was off the table. “If they [Protasiewicz] decide to inject their own political bias inside the process and not follow the law, we have the ability to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. And we also have the ability to hold her accountable to the voters of Wisconsin.”

Vos organized the panel last month to explore the possibility of removing Protasiewicz from office if she does not recuse herself from a redistricting case. The third justice in Vos’ once-anonymous panel was revealed to be Patience Roggensack, whose opinion on the issue is currently unknown. All three justices leaned conservative when they served on the court; Roggensack is the most recent conservative state chief justice.

Last Friday, Protasiewicz announced she would not recuse herself from the redistricting case that could undue years of Republican skewed gerrymandering in Wisconsin. Vos and the state’s GOP argued that Protasiewicz compromised her impartiality on the case when she referred to the GOP-drawn maps as “rigged” during a campaign event before the election. A state judiciary disciplinary panel rejected several complaints against Protasiewicz last month over those comments.