A year ago, Brad Schimel became an unemployed bum after losing his bid for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Instead of going out and getting a real job, he pulled some strings with his old pal AG Pam Bondi, who appointed him as interim US Attorney for Eastern Wisconsin, because who needs competence when you have cronyism?
Just before Schimel's 120-day stint was to end, he learned that the federal judges chose not to allow him to keep the job permanently, in a large part due to the urging of Sen Tammy Baldwin, who didn't like his partisanship and lack of impartiality:
In a statement, Baldwin noted her Republican counterpart, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, raised concerns in 2022 that the U.S. justice system was "increasingly populated with political partisans who are incapable of administering justice equally."
"I share those exact concerns today," Baldwin said. "I never thought a clearly partisan actor like Brad Schimel should be a top federal prosecutor in our state to begin with, and he certainly shouldn't get an extension for this job."
On Wednesday, Bondi announced that she has appointed Schimel to the position of "First Assistant US Attorney," and will leave the position of US Attorney vacant. This makes Schimel the head of the office. The original First Assistant US Attorney, Richard Frohling, got bumped out of his job into some unnamed executive position.
Alarmingly, the report states that the Orange crime syndicate has no formal US Attorney in 62 of the 93 US Attorney offices across the country. It makes one shudder just how many of these are due to the Senate not doing its job of confirming nominees and how many are end runs, as in Schimel's case, to put political appointees in what should be civil service positions.
