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Scott Walker investigation and controversy[edit]
Between 2010 and 2013, Chisholm’s office investigated staff and campaign supporters of Scott Walker, then the Milwaukee County executive and the Governor of Wisconsin from 2011, through the state’s “John Doe” investigatory process. This process which exists in three states and permits prosecutors to call witnesses in closed hearings before a judge, who can compel testimony by granting witnesses immunity.[5] The investigation resulted in four felony convictions, including those of Timothy Russell and Kelly Rindfleisch, who had both served as deputy chiefs of staff for Walker.[6] Rindfleisch pled guilty in 2012 to one felony count of misconduct in office for raising money on county time for Brett Davis’ failed bid for lieutenant governor. She was sentenced to six months in jail and three years of probation. She unsuccessfully appealed the conviction; her arguments that prosecutors violated her constitutional rights with overly broad search warrants were rejected by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.[7] Russell was convicted of stealing more than $21,000 from a veterans organization, Operation Freedom, which Walker had named him to lead, and sentenced to 2 years in prison.[8][9]

During the course of this investigation, Chisholm and fellow Milwaukee County prosecutors initiated a probe of possible campaign finance violations during the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election of 2012. Chisholm and four other Wisconsin district attorneys turned over management of this investigation to former Assistant United States Attorney Francis Schmitz.[10] This investigation received criticism from Republicans and from conservative journalists and activists, who alleged it to be a partisan undertaking against Walker’s supporters.[1] The British Daily Mail reported claims that Chisholm had pursued Walker’s staff and almost thirty conservative nonprofit groups for personal reasons. An individual formerly employed by Chisholm as a short-term special prosecutor alleged that Chisholm “was motivated by weeping complaints from his wife, a schoolteacher and labor shop steward whose union stood to lose if Walker’s policies prevailed” [11] Chisholm denied this and his own attorney, Samuel Leib, denounced the allegation as “scurrilous, desperate, and just plain cheap”[12] Republican activist Eric O’Keefe sued Chisholm and two assistant district attorneys in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, alleging the commission of civil rights violations during the course of the investigation.[citation needed]

The Daily Mail and syndicated columnist George Will also reported that, as part of this investigation, leaders of “virtually every conservative political nonprofit” in Wisconsin were subjected to the execution of pre-dawn search warrants. These claims further alleged that armed police corralled children and prevented these individuals from contacting lawyers, the latter under the purview of a gag order inherent to the John Doe process.[11] Chisholm’s attorneys disputed these allegations, which they stating had originated with O’Keefe, whose home was not raided, and that they lacked an evidentiary basis.[13]

Federal judge Rudolph Randa acted on O’Keefe’s filings and issued a preliminary injunction against Chisholm and his co-defendants. Randa[14] was criticized for his decision and ultimately overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which dismissed the lawsuit. Shortly thereafter, Randa acted in another lawsuit naming Chisholm, telling the state Government Accountability Board that it could not enforce a controversial section of Wisconsin campaign finance law. Randa ruled that this section impeded the First Amendment rights of conservatives associated with the Milwaukee-based Citizens for Responsible Government.[15] Eight days later, on October 22, Judge Randa extended his temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of the law until November 12. He issued the original order on October 14, which would have expired on October 28 without further action. Randa set oral arguments in the case for October 31, 2014. The lawsuit challenging the law was filed by Citizens for Responsible Government Advocates.[16]

A Cornell Law School professor, William A. Jacobson, described Chisholm’s purported motivation for commencing the John Doe investigation as “chilling”. Jacobson claimed that “no one has been able to explain why District Attorney John Chisholm has gone to the lengths he has gone to try to find criminal conduct that could taint Governor Walker. If this new information is accurate, now we know the motivation, and there needs to be an investigation of the investigators.”[11] These allegations notwithstanding, Dodge County, Wisconsin circuit judge Steven Bauer ruled on November 6, 2014 that Chisholm had acted “in good faith” during the course of the John Doe investigation. The judge noted that the campaign finance laws used as the investigation’s basis “were and are arguably still enforceable.”[17][18]