MADISON, Wis. — As extreme right-wing politician Brad Schimel desperately tries to distance himself from his extreme anti-abortion record, including his support for Wisconsin’s 1849 criminal abortion ban, the years preceding the fall of Roe v. Wade tell a different story.
New reporting today from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel revealed that Brad Schimel’s hand-picked aides played key roles in the successful effort to end reproductive freedom nationwide. According to the Journal Sentinel, Brad Schimel’s right hand Misha Tseytlin, a former Wisconsin solicitor general who served as an extension of the GOP-controlled Legislature and Scott Walker, introduced to a far-right legal group the strategy that eventually resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court striking down Roe.
“Brad Schimel’s involvement in the scheme to rip away Americans’ reproductive freedom is as damning as it is chilling for the millions of Wisconsinites who have suffered because of his far-right activism,” said Democratic Party of Wisconsin Deputy Communications Director Haley McCoy. “Now, Brad Schimel wants to take his extreme activism to the Wisconsin Supreme Court where he will use his power to protect Wisconsin’s 1849 ban on nearly all abortions.”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: A top aide to Brad Schimel as attorney general helped build a strategy to overturn Roe v. Wade
By: Mary Spicuzza
When Brad Schimel was Wisconsin’s attorney general, he hired a top aide who later played a key role in developing a strategy to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Misha Tseytlin, who served as solicitor general under Schimel at the state Department of Justice, reportedly suggested the strategy at a series of conservative conferences around the country, including one that Schimel also attended.
Now, Tseytlin’s efforts are under scrutiny during a high-stakes race that will decide control of the state Supreme Court. It could also determine the fate of abortion access in Wisconsin, with at least one key case likely coming before the next court.
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Schimel picked Tseytlin for the solicitor general job shortly after the position was created by then-Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2015. At the time, Schimel noted Tseytlin had been a law clerk for Justice Anthony Kennedy at the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Misha brings a wealth of experience that will serve our state well in litigation in both the state and federal courts,” Schimel said in a statement at the time.
The move to create the high-powered position came as the state was being challenged in court over GOP-backed laws, including ones restricting abortion and requiring photo IDs to vote.
As Schimel expanded the new office, he faced criticism from some Democrats who accused him of creating a taxpayer-funded conservative law firm inside the Justice Department.
“Schimel obtained more than $1 million from the Legislature for funding of a special Office of Solicitor General with not just an SG, but deputies and staff to support the political agenda of the Legislature, Gov. Scott Walker and Schimel,” Peg Lautenschlager, a Democrat who had previously served as attorney general, wrote in a 2016 Journal Sentinel opinion piece.
In November 2016, just days after Donald Trump was first elected president, Tseytlin traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the annual conference of the Federalist Society, a prominent conservative legal group. During a cocktail hour at the historic Mayflower Hotel, Tseytlin suggested that a state pass a 15-week abortion limit to bring the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court, according to the book The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America.
“Tseytlin posed a theoretical question, according to people familiar with the discussion: What would happen if a state tried to pass an abortion limit at, say, 15 weeks?” the book reads. “A slightly earlier restriction could force the court to examine the viability rule — and shake the very foundations of Roe. Could they push the number of weeks back just to the point at which their opponents would challenge it?”
Tseytlin “had a hard time believing” Kennedy or Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. would strike down a ban “that was just a few weeks earlier than 20,” according to the 2024 book, which was written by New York Times reporters Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer.
They reported that he discussed the idea with someone linked to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group.
The following summer, Tseytlin, Schimel and another top DOJ staffer attended an Alliance Defending Freedom conference at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel, a luxury resort on the coast in Orange County, California. J.D. Tripoli, Walker’s deputy legal counsel, was also in attendance, according to the group’s list of attendees.
Tseytlin “was there to present his legal strategy to end Roe,” The Fall of Roe book read. “Lawyers had a moral duty to act, Tseytlin told the group, according to participants. He proposed his idea for an abortion ban that set a limit earlier than 20 weeks to undercut Roemore openly.”
Tseytlin went to the conference, which was called the 2017 Summit on Religious Liberty, in his “personal capacity,” a DOJ spokesman said at the time.
“He did not attend the conference in his official capacity, and he only logged work time during non-conference hours,” Paul Ferguson of the Office of Open Government wrote in a 2018 response to an open records request from the liberal group One Wisconsin Now.
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While there, Schimel participated in a panel moderated by conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt titled, “Reinvigorated Federalism: Innovative (and Constitutional!) State Efforts for Human Flourishing.” The planned topics for discussion included cases involving vendors who refused to work at same-sex weddings, religious organizations that refused to place foster children or children available for adoption with same-sex couples, and bathroom access for transgender people, according to an outline.
Alliance Defending Freedom spent about $4,000 to pay for Schimel’s trip to the event, covering his costs for the “ADF conference, airfare, meals, hotel, ground transportation,” according to his 2018 Statement of Economic Interests, which was filed for his 2017 expenses.
At the time, Schimel instructed a DOJ staffer not to add the trip to his official schedule.
“Since the conference is personal/political travel not in any way funded by taxpayers, I do not plan to have any portion of it become public information, so when I get an agenda, I do not plan to have it become an official document,” Schimel wrote in a June 2017 email.
The following year, when asked by a USA Today Network-Wisconsin reporter about Schimel’s email, a spokeswoman said the attorney general was using “shorthand phrases” with a scheduler to tell her she didn’t need to place the agenda in his official travel records since the trip was privately funded.
Schimel did get help preparing for the conference from one DOJ staffer, records show. The week before the conference, Schimel requested to meet with Kevin LeRoy, his deputy solicitor general. They met over a lunch hour, and LeRoy attended the conference. The DOJ covered about $1,000 in related costs for LeRoy’s trip, records show.
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Derrick Honeyman, a spokesman for the Crawford campaign, noted Schimel has opposed abortion for years and defended Wisconsin’s 1849 law banning abortion without exceptions for rape or incest.
When he was Waukesha County district attorney, Schimel signed onto a 2012 legal paper that advocated for a plan to make abortion illegal in nearly all cases. The white paper from the anti-abortion group Wisconsin Right to Life argued that the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn Roe and that the 1849 law would then immediately make the procedure illegal in Wisconsin.
“Brad Schimel doesn’t want voters to know that his top aide at the Wisconsin Department of Justice secretly worked with an extreme right-wing group on the legal strategy to overturn Roe v. Wade and eradicate nearly 50 years of constitutional protection of reproductive freedom — something Schimel has always wanted to do,” Honeyman said. “This is as shady as it is extreme.”
