Leftist Wisconsin AG Failing At The Issue He Campaigned On

In 2018, an attorney from the law firm that specialized in fixing Democrat indiscretions and helped deliver the Russia collusion hoax thought he had a winning political weapon in his race for Wisconsin attorney general. 

Democrat Josh Kaul “hammered” then-state AG Brad Schimel, a Republican, for lengthy delays in testing some 4,000 sexual assault evidence kits. Never mind that Schimel’s predecessors — Republican and Democrat, including Kaul’s drunk-driving AG mother — had failed to do much about the backlog of rape kits that had gathered dust on police and hospital shelves since as far back as the 1980s. Kaul, of course, conveniently left out the fact that Schimel had gone after a $4 million federal grant early in his term to clean up the backlog. Nor did the leftist’s campaign mention that the problem wasn’t isolated to Wisconsin, that a USA Today Network investigation reported that 70,000 or more evidence kits nationwide remained untested at the time. 

Context, however, has no place in political messaging. Kaul rode the manipulated issue to a razor-thin victory. 

Some six years later, the moon-faced attorney general seeking a third term blasted Schimel again on the rape kit issue as the Republican was in the middle of a doomed campaign for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

The latest data from Kaul’s own Department of Justice’s Division of Forensic Sciences, however, show the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratories are taking significantly longer to process sexual assault evidence on Kaul’s watch than it did during Schimel’s tenure. Transparency, too, seems to be a big problem for the incumbent AG, as a Federalist review shows. 

Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, a Republican and Kaul’s repeat opponent from the 2022 race, called the lag times in forensic testing “the most significant broken promise” of Kaul’s tenure. 

Kaul says it’s the Republican-controlled legislature’s fault for failing to fund all of the lab positions he’s requested, but lawmakers have pumped in tens of millions of dollars for crime labs and enhanced technologies over the years. 

Even as he complains about funding limitations, Wisconsin’s top prosecutor, a tool of the national leftist “Get Trump” lawfare campaign, has devoted a lot of time and taxpayer money to a political witch hunt targeting the president’s 2020 election attorneys. 

Failing the Test

Kaul has been on a CYA tour of late following the long overdue release of the state DOJ’s Annual Crime Lab Report. Another year finds another significant increase in average DNA processing times, at 129 days in 2024 compared to 108 in 2023. Sexual assaults accounted for about 24 percent of all DNA cases handled by the agency. They composed 7.5 percent of toxicology tests. Turnaround times for these tests increased from 64 days in 2023 to 82 days last year. 

DNA testing turnaround time was 80 days in Schimel’s last year in office, and 51 days for toxicology cases, according to the 2018 crime lab report. Schimel, too, dealt with similar budget limitations and staffing issues, as evidenced by Kaul’s urgent request for increased funding for the state labs in his first year on the job in 2019. 

Annual testing numbers have also declined since Toney’s 2022 campaign declared in a press release that the state crime labs under Kaul are “testing significantly less items than former AG Brad Schimel and is still taking longer to test many categories of key items in comparison to Schimel, including DNA.” Even left-friendly Politifact (Politifarce) had to rate the Republican candidate’s claim as “True.” 

A state audit in 2024 found several administrative problems at the crime labs. 

“DOJ should take additional actions to improve the timeliness of its crime laboratories in analyzing evidence. DOJ should improve productivity standards for crime laboratory analysts, improve how its crime laboratories centrally record information, and improve its annual reports on the crime laboratories,” the Legislative Audit Bureau recommended.

Transparency Troubles 

Kaul’s recent campaign of blame, assisted by water-carrying corporate media outlets like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (which recently published a blatant woe-is-Kaul story), omits a troubling transparency problem at his DOJ. A Federalist review found past annual state crime lab reports over Kaul’s two terms as attorney general are nowhere to be found on the DOJ’s website. Hyperlinks take the user to the department’s homepage. Press releases on the 2022 and 2023 reports don’t include a link to the report.  

The links within online news stories in previous reports also route back to the DOJ’s homepage. In the “Dashboards” tab on the site, there is no mention of any crime lab report from 2018-2023. 

And over the past several years the DOJ has issued each annual report later and later in the year. The report released in 2023 was made public in August of that year. In 2024, the review came out in November. The latest publication was released a few weeks before Christmas. 

State auditors noted that the DOJ’s 2022 report, for instance, “did not accurately reflect the timeliness” of some testing assignments. While 17 assignments had a median turnaround time of eight days, the 2022 report excluded 27 assignments that had a median turnaround time of 86 days. 

“DOJ indicated these assignments were excluded because of an oversight,” the 2024 audit stated. 

‘Most Significant Broken Promise’

While Kaul complains about a lack of funding for the state’s crime labs, he’s dumping untold amounts of taxpayer dollars and resources in into the Democrats’ political vendetta. 

The Federalist — in recent days in particular — has extensively reported on Kaul’s politically-driven prosecution of two Trump 2020 campaign attorneys and the Wisconsin Election Day operations director in the Democrat’s falsely named “fake electors” case. A year and a half in the making, the case’s court schedule looks like a trial would line up in the thick of next year’s midterm campaign season.  

As The Federalist reported Wednesday, the liberal Dane Country Circuit Court judge presiding over the case is accused of signing off on an order apparently written by a retired judge with a grudge against one of the defendants. 

Kaul’s office did not return The Federalist’s requests for comment on the latest annual crime lab report, or on the cost of his pet prosecution. 

His challenger had plenty to say about the incumbent attorney general, who cynically turned a rape kit testing backlog into a political win. 

“Forensic testing was one of Josh Kaul’s key priorities and in seven years he has proven incapable of improving the crime labs,” Toney said in a press release. “This is the most significant broken promise of his tenure as Attorney General. Wisconsin deserves new leadership that will help victims receive the justice they deserve by putting public safety over politics and supporting the dedicated staff at our crime labs.”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.