Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) fired Michael Gableman on Friday, “more than a year after he hired the former Supreme Court justice to probe the 2020 election and three days after Vos barely survived a primary challenge Gableman supported,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

Associated Press: “The firing of Michael Gableman capped a 14-month ride that began when Vos hired him to look into the election under pressure from Trump. But as the probe progressed under bipartisan criticism, Vos’ relationship soured with both Trump and Gableman.”

New York Times: “Ms. Kleefisch’s predicament illustrates how Mr. Trump’s supporters have turned fury over his 2020 election loss and the misguided belief that its results can be nullified into central campaign issues in the Republican primary for governor in Wisconsin, a battleground state won by razor-thin margins in the last two presidential elections. G.O.P. candidates have been left choosing whether to tell voters they are wrong or to engage in the fiction that something can be done to reverse Mr. Trump’s defeat.”

“Dozens of Republican voters and activists interviewed across the state in the last week said they wanted to see lawmakers decertify the state’s election results and claw back its 10 electoral votes, something that cannot legally be done. Nearly all of them pointed to a July decision from the conservative-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court, which ruled that drop boxes used to collect ballots during the pandemic were illegal under state law, as evidence that hundreds of thousands of 2020 votes should be thrown out.”

“At least five Republican primary winners in battleground states won by Joe Biden embraced Donald Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen,” CBS News reports.

“Several took action to try to overturn the 2020 election results when Trump lost their states, and if elected in November, they could have the power to block or delay the certification of election results in their states in the 2024 presidential election.”

Bill Kristol weighs in on the last 24 hours:

Good: Republicans cave as Congress passes health care for veterans, Pelosi goes to Taiwan, Zawahari dead, and the grand jury subpoenas Pat Cippolone.

Not so bad, or at least better than the alternative: Eric Schmitt beats Eric Greitens in Missouri.

Bad: Peter Meijer defeated in Michigan primary. 

Really, really ugly: Arizona. What’s in the water out there?

A Wisconsin judge said that a Republican-ordered, taxpayer-funded investigation into the 2020 election found “absolutely no evidence of election fraud,” but did reveal contempt for the state’s open records law by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and a former state Supreme Court justice he hired, the AP reports.

“Sorry, Jared, there is nothing I can do.”

— Rupert Murdoch on the phone to Jared Kushner, quoted by the New York Times on Election Night 2020.

“The husband of a Colorado woman who has been missing for more than two years pleaded guilty on Thursday to casting her mail-in ballot for Donald Trump during the 2020 election,” the New York Times reports.

Barry Morphew told FBI agents: “I figured all these other guys are cheating.”

Wisconsin Speaker Robin Vos (R) told WISN that Donald Trump called him “within the last week” still seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

Said Vos: “I explained that it’s not allowed under the constitution. He has a different opinion.”

“Herschel Walker, Georgia’s Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, gave a 10-minute stump speech on Tuesday in which he told no new whoppers, made no obvious mistakes and allowed reporters to witness the whole thing,” the New York Times reports.

“That seeming nonstory was actually news, given how Mr. Walker’s candidacy has been going recently, and it appeared to reflect the labors of a team of Republican operatives who have swooped in to turn around his campaign, after a string of unforced errors called into question his readiness for political prime time.”

Detroit News poll: “Republican primary voters surveyed in last week’s poll were told Republican leaders in the state Senate conducted an investigation into claims of fraud in the 2020 election and found there was no evidence of widespread fraud.”

“Those surveyed then were asked who they believed: Republican leaders in the state Senate or Trump’s insistence there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election.”

“Respondents chose Trump’s claims over the state Senate’s by a margin of 59% to 26%.”

FiveThirtyEight finds that out of 340 Republican nominees for Senate, House, governor, attorney general and secretary of state so far, 120 are full-blown election deniers (35 percent).

An additional 48 nominees (14 percent) have expressed doubts about the election despite the multitude of evidence that it was legitimate.

In total, almost half of the GOP’s nominees for these offices have at least dabbled in false election claims.

“The Atlanta-area district attorney leading a wide-ranging criminal investigation into election interference by Donald Trump is weighing whether to call the former president before a special grand jury,” USA Today reports.

Just Security debunks the nonsensical idea that Donald Trump “really believed” he had won the election.

“Georgia investigators are scrutinizing Rudy Giuliani’s appearance before state lawmakers in 2020, where he peddled baseless claims of voter fraud and encouraged legislators to appoint a new slate of presidential electors,” CNN reports.

“The special purpose grand jury — which has been investigating whether former President Donald Trump or his allies violated the law in their efforts to flip the 2020 election results in Georgia — has heard testimony from at least four witnesses regarding Giuliani’s activities.”

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed 29 Republican state lawmakers in Arizona — 27 more than previously known — to set aside Joe Biden’s popular vote victory and “choose” presidential electors, the Washington Post reports.

“The revelation that Ginni Thomas was directly involved in pressing them to override the popular vote — an act that would have been without precedent in the modern era — intensified questions about whether her husband should recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 presidential election and attempts to subvert it.”

“The Justice Department has stepped up its criminal investigation into the creation of alternate slates of pro-Trump electors seeking to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, with a particular focus on a team of lawyers that worked on behalf of President Donald Trump,” the New York Times reports.