By M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Reporter
MADISON, Wis. — A lot is wrong with Wisconsin’s infamous political John Doe investigation. Just ask the three state and federal judges who have challenged it or ordered it to stop.
A lot of what’s wrong with the Democrat-launched probe into dozens of conservative groups appears to be the work of misleading prosecutors and a mainstream media hungry to gobble up the faulty information for the sake of an easy narrative.
AP file photo
CUTTING THROUGH: Gov. Scott Walker has faced all kinds of faulty information stemming from a politically charged John Doe probe – some of which has come from the prosecutors of the effectively dead probe. But the easy narrative might be what ultimately matters in the left’s attempt to ding the Republican’s armor in a likely presidential run.
Case in point: Politico Magazine’s latest dip into Wisconsin’s “peculiar” John Doe investigations as the backdrop of Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s likely run for president.
In his provocative piece headlined, Scott Walker’s Whitewater? Wisconsin’s governor faces a lingering campaign probe back home, JR Ross writes about the two “ever-expanding investigations” into Walker’s campaign and his political allies. Ross, editor of WisPolitics.com, wrote the piece for Politico Magazine.
He correctly notes that the investigations, launched by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat who has been accused of having a political ax to grind against the governor, “have produced a treasure trove of records for opponents and the media to pick over as they dive deeper into Walker’s background.”
But the reporter adds to the myriad erroneous information surrounding the stalled campaign finance investigation when he quotes from a court affidavit filed (found on pages 3, 4 and 6)by the probe’s special prosecutor Francis Schmitz.
“In essence, prosecutors believed Walker had solicited millions of dollars for the Wisconsin Club for Growth during the recall elections so donors and corporations could anonymously support him without any contributions limits,” Ross writes.
The Wisconsin Club for Growth and its director, Eric O’Keefe, have sued the prosecutors and the state Government Accountability Board charging they coordinated an illegal investigation that impeded conservatives’ First Amendment rights.
“To support their belief that the conservative groups acted as a de facto arm of the campaign, prosecutors referenced an email Walker fundraiser Kate Doner wrote (longtime Walker adviser R. J.) Johnson saying the governor wanted ‘all the issue advocacy efforts run thru (sic) one group to ensure correct messaging.’”
But Doner was not working for Walker’s campaign, Friends of Scott Walker, or Walker before November 2011. The emails quoted in the Politico story, taken directly from the affidavits in the John Doe, were written prior to that time.
Several were from March, one was from September, long before Walker became a candidate facing a recall election, thus canceling the prosecutions’ exotic and, as one judge put it, “simply wrong” theory that the governor’s campaign illegally coordinated with conservative issue advocacy groups like Wisconsin Club for Growth.
Schmitz’s erroneous affidavits, which he has yet to correct, put the communications in a much darker light, despite the fact there are no implications of illegal conduct associated with the emails.
The FOSW campaign finance reports show no compensation for Doner fundraising prior to November 2011.
O’Keefe confirmed to Wisconsin Reporter that Doner was retained by the WCFG in March 2011 to help raise money for the organization’s advocacy efforts for Act 10, Walker’s signature public-sector collective bargaining reforms that brought the wrath of organized labor and, John Doe targets like O’Keefe say, partisan speech regulators.
Doner was retained by FOSW in November 2011, while continuing to work for the club during 2012.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other publications have drawn from the same court document.
O’Keefe’s attorney, David Rivkin, in a statement last year following an unauthorized dump of John Doe-related records, said what he has often said in defending the conservative activists’ First Amendment rights.
“At a time when President Barack Obama and his cabinet members are raising funds for Democratic super PACs like Priorities USA, it is not a news story — and certainly not a crime — that Governor Walker would encourage support for groups that support his economic policies,” Rivkin said.
That fact is at the heart of an amicus brief recently filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, or WILL, on behalf of O’Keefe and the club. The conservatives have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse an appeals court decision not to take up a federal lawsuit against the John Doe prosecutors.
Rick Esenberg, founder and president of WILL, said the prosecutors’ strange theory puts illegal coordination between the conservative groups and Walker’s campaign in 2011, when Republican senators were being recalled but not the governor.
“How can there be a (in-kind) contribution to Walker’s campaign if the speech that is being engaged in is at a time when he’s not running for anything?” Esenberg said.
“That’s an aggressive theory if you think about it. Politicians raise money for other politicians all the time. President Obama in 2014 has a $16,000-a-plate sushi dinner raising money for advocacy groups, not for his election because he doesn’t have any more elections. Was that a contribution to the Obama campaign? Most people would say not,” the attorney added.
Rivkin said in the statement the document dump last year only confirmed there is no evidence to support the John Doe investigation targeting Wisconsin conservatives.
‘The prosecutors’ ‘evidence’ does not identify a single expenditure by the Wisconsin Club for Growth relating to Governor Walker’s recall election, much less one coordinated with the Walker campaign. There is no evidence of any attempt to circumvent campaign-finance limits,'” the attorney said.
As Ross notes in the Politico story, another mass records release dump by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in June 2014 included the prosecution’s catch phrase, “criminal scheme,” associated with Walker. It caught the national media’s attention, but “the issue was largely defused a week later after prosecutors felt compelled to issue a statement declaring the governor was not a target of the probe when it was halted by a judge who questioned the legal theory that supported it. They also said the legal theory did not establish ‘the existence of a crime,’” Ross wrote.
Walker has never been charged with any wrongdoing in the nearly five years prosecutors have dogged his campaign and conservative allies.
O’Keefe and others charge Schmitz, Chisholm and crew have never much worried about how their theory would stand up against the law. The process, they say, is the punishment – and the ultimate punishment is shutting down Walker and conservative voices.