For Immediate Release
May 21, 2018
Contact: Melanie Conklin, 608-260-2409
“This is a new low for Brad Schimel who has used his office time and time again to promote extremism and division while abandoning the basic duties of his job.”
MADISON — Attorney General Brad Schimel’s Department of Justice spent about $1,000 of taxpayer money to send one of Schimel’s top lawyers to a conference held by a known hate group that has supported the recriminalization of homosexuality and state-sanctioned sterilization of transgender people. According to his own financial reports, Schimel, who also attended, considered the trip a political or personal event, meaning it should not be paid for with taxpayer dollars.
“This is a new low for Brad Schimel who has used his office time and time again to promote extremism and division while abandoning the basic duties of his job,” said Melanie Conklin, communications director for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. “Schimel has no business being tasked with protecting the safety of Wisconsinites when he spends taxpayer money to schmooze with a hate group.”
According to newly released documents, Schimel also tried to keep his trip a secret from taxpayers, writing in an email “I do not plan to have any portion of [the trip] become public information.”
“Schimel used taxpayer dollars to meet with a known hate group and then tried to hide it from the very people who pay his salary,” added Conklin. “This is not someone we can trust to oversee and enforce open government laws, let alone be Wisconsin’s ‘top cop.’
“Yet again Schimel has put his own partisan political interests ahead of the needs of Wisconsinites. Hate and extremism have no place in our state Department of Justice. And in November, Wisconsin will elect a new attorney general who will take his job seriously and lead with integrity and responsibility.”
