Free Republic

MADISON — John Chisholm’s reputation for injecting politics into prosecution precedes him, and that might be reason enough why no Milwaukee taxpayer has yet to file a complaint (as of Wednesday night) against the Democratic Milwaukee County district attorney on charges of prosecutorial misconduct, legislative sources say. Republican lawmakers, among others, are urging Gov. Tony Evers to fire Chisholm after his office recommended a mere $1,000 bail for the man suspected to have killed six people and injured some 60 more in the Waukesha Christmas parade massacre. As Empower Wisconsin reported Wednesday, Evers will not even consider opening an investigation...

As I write, five persons are dead and over forty injured at the Waukesha Christmas Parade - a strange sentence to find oneself putting down in print. The injured include dozens of children, and the dead number members of Milwaukee's Dancing Grannies. Waukesha is a town of about 70,000 about fifty miles from the world-famous Kenosha.I switched on CNN this morning to find out the latest, and they weren't covering the story. So I take it the facts are not helpful to "the narrative". Is it in The New York Times? Why, yes, on page 22:SUV Plows into ParadeThese sick...

The ABC election computer is predicting the Coalition has secured majority government with at least 77 seats, as the Liberals appear set to secure Bass, Chisholm, Boothby and Wentworth. Labor held Bass and Chisholm, while Wentworth was in the hands of independent Kerryn Phelps prior to the election. "As far as I'm concerned on the numbers to come Bass will be the 76th seat. Postals and absent votes favour the Coalition in Bass and they're already ahead," ABC chief elections analyst Antony Green said. "At some time today Bass will tick over to become the 76th seat, delivering the Government...

MADISON, Wis. – Multiple courts have declared Wisconsin’s infamous John Doe investigation legally dead. John Chisholm doesn’t care. He’s the Captain Ahab of prosecutors. The Milwaukee County district attorney for nearly three years has obsessively attempted to resurrect his unconstitutional investigation into dozens of conservative groups and the campaign of Gov. Scott Walker. Now, the Democrat tells the U.S. Supreme Court that he would immediately restart his intimidation game, using the millions of documents John Doe prosecutors illegally seized, if the high court overturns the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision definitively ending the probe.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin prosecutors have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a state Supreme Court decision that shut down an investigation of alleged coordination between Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign and conservative groups. Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne told the Wisconsin State Journal that he, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and Iowa County District Attorney Larry Nelson filed the appeal Thursday. (snip) Chisholm launched the probe in 2012 under the John Doe law, which allowed prosecutors to compel testimony and bar people from talking about the investigation. The probe examined whether there was illegal coordination between...

MADISON, Wis. – They illegally seized the property of their political targets in an unconstitutional investigation. Now two top investigators in Wisconsin’s political John Doe probe are asking the state Supreme Court to hold on to that property so they can use it to defend themselves against civil rights lawsuits. David Budde and Robert Stelter, investigators with the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office, want to intervene in John Doe special prosecutor Francis Schmitz’s appeal. Schmitz is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling last month that shut down the investigation. As part of that ruling, the court ordered...

MADISON, Wis. – Beaten in just about every state courtroom they’ve entered, rogue prosecutors this week opened a new front in their war on Wisconsin’s conservatives and Gov. Scott Walker. This assault comes as Walker the Republican presidential candidate prepares for his first debate of the 2016 campaign season. Former John Doe Judge Neal Nettesheim agreed to a request this week by two prosecutors to unseal audio and documents seized from conservative activists during a nearly three-year John Doe investigation. The document dump came in response to a lawsuit filed by Cindy Archer, a former Walker aide and a target...

MADISON, Wis. – Michael Lutz, the highly decorated former Milwaukee cop and John Doe whistleblower, fatally shot himself early Sunday morning just inside the Milwaukee County line. Multiple sources tell Wisconsin Watchdog that Lutz lived an agonized life in the years after he was shot while on the job in 2005. Things got worse, those sources say, after he went public about Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm’s “hyper-partisan” pursuit of Republican Gov. Scott Walker. “I know Mike, and the worst thing he could have imagined was being in a mug shot, in an orange jumpsuit on a perp walk,”...

"I think the word 'freedom' came out of my mouth because I saw it in front of me. I saw the freedom that we were looking for. And every person was sharing it, and so that word came out." - Richie Havens, Rolling Stone interview The state Supreme Court announced Thursday a four to two decision to end the "second John Doe," the coordinated secret investigation, political in nature, into the issue-advocacy activities of Wisconsin conservatives. July 16, 2015, should be commemorated in Wisconsin as holiday celebrating the return of the First Amendment. It is a long-established practice of so-called...

In January of 2014, John Chisholm had a choice. The Milwaukee district attorney's John Doe investigation into a slate of conservative groups in Wisconsin had just been ground to a halt by Judge Gregory Peterson, who overturned a number of subpoenas that had been granted the previous October.Given Peterson's common-sense reasoning in quashing the subpoenas, Chisholm and his chief investigator, Francis Schmitz, could have called off the investigation. After all, continuing to appeal the decision would take valuable financial resources and staff time, with little chance for success. And Chisholm already had been embarrassed by a previous John Doe investigation...

On July 16, we saw the definitive end to one of the greatest abuses of power in recent memory. After five years, the Wisconsin ­supreme court finally halted the Milwaukee district attorney’s notorious “John Doe” investigation that targeted Governor Scott Walker and political allies trying to reform the state’s laws regarding fiscally ruinous public employee unions. Imagine a grand jury investigation but without the jury, leaving a prosecutor who operates secretly—in this case, the district attorney’s investigation was headed by one John Chis­holm—with almost sole discretion to pursue whatever evidence he deems relevant to his investigation. (There was nominal ­supervision...

Conservative justices in Wisconsin handed the governor’s allies a win Thursday in the ‘John Doe’ election scandal. But liberals say the deck was stacked against them from the beginning. The gods are smiling on Scott Walker. And by the gods, I mean four of the six Badger State’s supreme court justices, who just put the kibosh on a lengthy and secret “John Doe” investigation that targeted some of the governor’s top allies and like-minded groups. The investigation was sparked over allegations that outside independent groups who supported Walker secretly coordinated with Wisconsin Republicans during the run up to the 2012...

It was still dark outside when “Jonah” (not his real name) heard the pounding on his front door. As luck would have it, he was awake — or mostly awake. He’d gotten up at 4:00 a.m. on October 3, 2013, to see his parents off to the airport. They were leaving on a quick trip to raise money for the children’s charity his father runs. Jonah was 16 at the time, old enough to stay home alone for a short time, but not old enough to deal with what awaited him on the other side of the door. The pounding...

MADISON, Wis. – Cindy Archer was once made to beg sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents not to shoot her dogs during an early-morning raid on her Madison home. Now the former aide to Gov. Scott Walker who has never been charged with a crime in the Democrat-launched John Doe investigation is fighting back in court. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published Tuesday evening, Archer writes that Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and his agents ransacked her house and ruined her career. “After much soul-searching, I am filing a civil-rights lawsuit on Wednesday against Milwaukee County District Attorney...

MADISON, Wis. – Kelly Rindfleisch’s roller-coaster ride to justice got rougher Tuesday. Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman withdrew the motion he filed late last week asking the court to reconsider its denial of Rindfleisch’s Fourth Amendment appeal. In a brief letter filed in the court Tuesday, Gableman said Rindlfleisch will nevertheless “have the benefit of review by the entire Court” because she has also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review her case. Sources close to the case tell Wisconsin Watchdog that Gableman was concerned he would not have the votes to win reconsideration because Justice David Prosser would...

In April, three victims of Wisconsin’s long-running “John Doe” investigations broke their silence. Former Scott Walker adviser Cindy Archer spoke to National Review on the record while two other women asked for their identities to be concealed. All three, however, told remarkably similar stories — of police raids at dawn, pounding on the door, threats of battering rams, and ransacked homes. They weren’t suspected of drug crimes, violent crimes, or other crimes recognizable to the American public. Rather, they were either close associates of Scott Walker or involved in the broader conservative movement in Wisconsin — and were caught up...

MADISON, Wis. – Democrat Milwaukee County prosecutors tapped the email and text communications of conservative activists as part of a five-year probe aimed at bringing down Republican Gov. Scott Walker, affidavits reviewed by Wisconsin Watchdog reveal. One target of the spying operation told Wisconsin Watchdog the methods used to keep tabs on Wisconsin residents were like those of the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program. “It was actually worse because (Milwaukee County prosecutors) were taking the body of emails and looking at actual data,” said the source, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution from the prosecutors....

An effort to investigate Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's political fundraising during his 2012 recall election cost Badger State voters $1.1 million, recently released court documents show. The investigation was halted last year after a judge determined that the activities alleged in the probe were not in fact illegal. The figures may grow higher. At least seven lawsuits relating to the "John Doe" probe, a secret investigative procedure available to state prosecutors, have been filed and litigation remains ongoing, reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Patrick Marley. The Wisconsin Club for Growth, one of the targets of the probe, has appealed...

While visiting Iowa this weekend, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker commented on the wildly out-of-control “John Doe” prosecution waged by partisan Democrats in his state. One of the many objectionable features of this crusade was that the targets were legally gagged from talking about it. Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm responded to Walker’s comments by threatening him. Whatever Chisholm’s virtues as a D.A. might be, a keen sense of irony is evidently not among them.The Wisconsin Witch Hunt has been an abiding interest of mine for years–rarely have so many been terrorized by so few for so little gain, until...

In a swing through the crucial presidential state of Iowa this weekend,Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took the rare step of lashing out at prosecutors who had probed his campaign by questioning whether their tactics were constitutional.In an equally unusual turn,prosecutors fired back by calling Walker's comments inaccurate,offensive and defamatory—with Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm suggesting Walker could be criminally charged for lying. They said Walker should call for the release of sealed court records so the public could know more about the investigation and raids on people's homes,but Walker gave that notion little heed....The state Supreme Court is now...