Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel said he doesn’t know whether to believe Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore’s accusers.
MADISON - Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel said he "starts by believing" the women accusing Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore and President Donald Trump but doesn't know enough about the allegations to say in the end whether they're true.
In an interview, Schimel broke with other top Republicans from Wisconsin when it comes to Moore. Gov. Scott Walker and House Speaker Paul Ryan last month said they believe Moore’s accusers and want him to drop out of the Senate race.
Schimel said he had not studied the specifics of accusations against Moore and Trump regarding their alleged mistreatment of women and didn’t know if they were true. He spoke on Monday, the same day Trump endorsed Moore and the Republican National Committee resumed spending on his behalf.
Schimel said rather than Moore and Trump, he is focused on cracking down and preventing sexual harassment at his Department of Justice. He did not provide specifics, but an aide said one DOJ employee had been reassigned and two had resigned after complaints were filed.
He acknowledged that the standard for determining whether someone should drop out of a race is lower than the one to prove criminal guilt, but added he didn’t know enough about the widely publicized accusations to decide whether he thought they were true.
“If I were a voter in Alabama, I would read the Washington Post article (first disclosing the allegations) and I would inform myself,” Schimel said.
At least 13 women have accused Trump of inappropriately touching them.
Schimel's Democratic opponent in next year's election, Josh Kaul, issued a statement Wednesday saying he believed Moore and Trump's accusers. He said Moore should drop out of the race for Senate and Trump should be investigated.
"I fundamentally disagree with Brad Schimel's view that our AG should only focus on what's happening internally at DOJ," Kaul said in his statement. "Our AG — our chief law enforcement official — needs to be a leader on these issues and should condemn this kind of inexcusable conduct."
While Schimel did not call for any politicians to face consequences for how they treated women, Schimel praised women for going public with their allegations.
“On this whole thing, there’s something I’m very pleased with and that is we’re seeing survivors of sexual harassment and sexual assault coming forward over and over again lately and often against people who are very powerful,” Schimel said. “And I think in the past the reaction of American society would have been to quickly reject the things they’re saying. And we’re not seeing that."
Last week, two women told The Capital Times that state Rep. Josh Zepnick (D-Milwaukee) had drunkenly kissed them without their consent in 2011 and 2015. The newspaper did not name his accusers.
Zepnick has said he did not recall the incidents, which occurred during years in which he said he had a problem with drinking. He said he has been sober for two years and issued an apology to the women accusing him.
Democratic leaders in the Assembly and the head of the state Democratic Party have called for him to resign. Zepnick has said he won’t do that.
Kaul on Wednesday said he also believed Zepnick should step down. Schimel said he was not joining the call for Zepnick to do that.
Department of Justice employees were given new training to prevent sexual harassment in 2015 and 2016 and new policies were adopted in 2016, Schimel said.
He also indicated he had taken action against employees over the issue.
“We have addressed it with several staff members who have — some have now parted ways with (the) Department of Justice, some have seen demotions as a result of allegations,” he said.
Schimel spokesman Johnny Koremenos said in 2015 there were three sexual harassment complaints at DOJ. In one case, supervisor John Knappmiller resigned after he was accused of positioning his groin close to several female workers faces and repeatedly calling one woman. Another employee resigned as a result of sexual harassment complaints that year and a third case was unsubstantiated.
In 2016, there was one complaint. It was unsubstantiated, but the employee was assigned to a different job, Koremenos said.
This year there have been two complaints, including one that was unsubstantiated. In the other case, a female DOJ workers complained she was being harassed by an Eau Claire County sheriff's captain. That case was handled by the county and a third-party investigator, which found the captain engaged in unwelcome but not illegal behavior.
Also this week, Schimel told the Wisconsin State Journal, Capital Times and Associated Press that he agrees with legislative leaders from both parties that sexual harassment complaints against lawmakers or their staffs should be kept secret. He said he would defend that position in court, even though his office has taken a different stance and released documents under the state’s open records law about harassment complaints about employees in his Department of Justice.