A lawyer for Tesla CEO and free speech advocate Elon Musk is accusing Wisconsin’s partisan liberal Attorney General Josh Kaul of trying to curtail his free speech rights just two days before the April 1 election.
Update – the Supreme Court has rejected Kaul’s request, and liberal justices Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky rejected Musk’s attorneys demand that they recuse because they have campaigned for liberal Susan Crawford (Karofsky even today).
Musk’s lawyer says that Kaul’s last-minute court action – seeking to prevent Musk from paying Wisconsinites to be a spokesperson for a petition against activist judges – is an attempt at “restraining Mr. Musk’s political speech and curtailing his First Amendment rights.”
In the court filing on Sunday before the liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court, Musk’s lawyer also demanded that liberal justices Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky recuse themselves from deciding whether the court should hear Kaul’s action because they have actively campaigned for liberal Justice Susan Crawford.
“Critically, Justices Dallet and Karofsky have very publicly assisted Judge Susan Crawford with her campaign for a seat on this Court. Judge Crawford, in turn, has been vocal in criticizing Mr. Musk. Given this backdrop, and to avoid any potential perceptions of bias and manifestations of possible bias, Justices Dallet and Karofsky should decline to participate in consideration of this matter,” Musk’s lawyers wrote.
Dallet door knocked for Crawford this week:
Karofky has also been active on the campaign trail.
Surprisingly, Musk’s lawyers did not include liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz in that recusal request even though Protasiewicz was campaigning for Crawford on SUNDAY, according to a post on her Facebook page.
And liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley was campaigning for Crawford this week as well but was not included in the recusal request.
Musk’s event starts at 6:30 p.m. at KI Convention Center, 333 Main St Green Bay. Although he initially tweeted that he was giving two $1 million checks to people who vote, he later clarified that post to state that the money is going to people who sign his petition against activist judges. That petition doesn’t mention Crawford or her conservative opponent Brad Schimel, who Musk supports. It’s not illegal to give people money to support a petition.
News outlets have continued to misleadingly say that Kaul is trying to prevent Musk from paying voters, when Musk has made it clear that he is paying petition signers (whether they vote or not.) The news media have also largely downplayed or censored the fact the liberal justices have a severe conflict of interest because they are actively campaigning for Crawford, a leftist Dane County judge with a history of ideological lawsuits seeking to overturn Act 10 and Voter ID.
An appeals court and circuit judge refused to rule on Kaul’s request to restrain Musk from paying the checks to petition signers, in the time frame sought by Kaul.
