Posted on 07/17/2015 1:33:12 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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 recall vote.
John Doe refers to a Wisconsin law that lets prosecutors investigate suspects to determine whether or not they have probable cause, according to Marcus Berghahn, of Hurley, Burish, and Stanton Law Firm.
This particular John Doe proceeding -- conducted in secret -- investigated got kicked off in 2012 because, as the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel notes, prosecutors suspected that Walker's gubernatorial campaign illegally coordinated with the Wisconsin Club for Growth.
The special prosecutor referred to it as an "a criminal scheme" and to prove it, investigators pointed to documents that seemed to show Walker urging donors to contribute to the advocacy groups, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
The court’s decision -- split 4-2 along ideological lines -- ruled that the state’s anti-coordination law is too broad and vague to comply with the First Amendment.
But even though Team Walker won and progressives lost, Wisconsinites on both sides are not ready to move on. And prosecutor Francis Schmitz has indicated he may try to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
Progressives say the justices should have recused themselves, because they benefited from issue-advocacy ads.
“The four justices whose opinion halts an investigation and possible prosecution of Walker's campaign and allies and orders records to be destroyed were the beneficiaries of at least $10 million in campaign spending by parties named in the investigation,” said a statement from progressive group One Wisconsin Now issued after the decision.
As you might expect, conservatives strongly back the state’s top court -- and are univocal in their support of the conservative justices who moved to call off the secret investigation. Rick Esenberg, the president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said the four made the right call by choosing not to recuse themselves. His group filed an amicus brief for the side that ultimately won.
“I don’t think it can be the case that the mere fact that somebody has spent money on issue advocacy means that you can never hear a case in which they’re involved,” he said.
The John Doe investigators targeted a number of members from throughout Wisconsin conservatives’ infrastructure in the state -- an infrastructure whose operations that has been remarkably efficient and effective.
“They issued subpoenas or search warrants to virtually every conservative or libertarian 501(c)4 advocacy organization in the state,” he continued. “So they were all involved, in a way, almost every one of them.”
“It’s a little bit like the guy who kills his parents and then pleads for clemency because he’s an orphan,” Rick Esenberg, the president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty said.
To assert that investigating conservative advocacy organizations means conservative justices can’t rule on the case, Esenberg argues, is unfair.
“It’s a little bit like the guy who kills his parents and then pleads for clemency because he’s an orphan,” Esenberg said. “They don’t get to remove one side of the political spectrum from the bench because they’ve attacked the entire advocacy structure on that side of the political spectrum.”
And investigators’ use of SWAT teams and no-knock raids drew criticism from both ends of the ideological spectrum. Salon’s Heather Digby Parton called the no-knock raids “disturbing.”
Matt Kittle, the editor-in-chief of the conservative news site Wisconsin Watchdog, characterized the investigation as Nixonian.
“This was, based on our investigation over the last few years, one of the more abusive probes in our lifetimes in the state of Wisconsin, and I think it goes up against any nationally,” he said. “This was politically motivated, the court made that clear today.”
But Wisconsin progressives argue that that all misses the point.
State Sen. Chris Larson said the ruling is “the definition of corruption.”
“If you asked the average person on the street, ‘Draw me a picture of what a corrupt system looks like,’ this would be too obvious to them,” he said. “This is it. This is what they would draw.”
“This is our state,” he continued. “And hey, if Walker keeps going, this will be the country.”
April 2015: Wisconsin’s Shame: ‘I Thought It Was a Home Invasion’
July 16, 2015: Excerpts of Majority opinion:
• The justice says the special prosecutor, Francis Schmitz, rooted his probe in “vague, overbroad” sections of the state’s campaign finance law, giving him too much discretion:
The lack of clarity in Ch. 11, which the special prosecutor relies upon, leads us to the unsettling conclusion that it is left to government bureaucrats and/or individual prosecutors to determine how much coordination between campaign committees and independent groups is “too much” coordination. In essence, under his theory, every candidate, in every campaign in which an issue advocacy group participates, would get their own John Doe proceeding and their own special prosecutor to determine the extent of any coordination. This is not, and cannot, be the law in a democracy…
The special prosecutor has disregarded the vital principle that in our nation and our state political speech is a fundamental right and is afforded the highest level of protection. The special prosecutor’s theories…would assure that such political speech will be investigated with paramilitary-style home invasions conducted in the pre-dawn hours and then prosecuted and punished. In short, the special prosecutor completely ignores the command that, when seeking to regulate issue advocacy groups, such regulation must be done with “narrow specificity.”
• The justice defends the decision by a state judge presiding over the investigation to quash subpoenas in the case:
John Doe judges are given enormous discretion to control the scope and conduct of a John Doe proceeding. With this important point in mind, we now turn to the specific issue before us: whether Reserve Judge Peterson violated a plain legal duty when he quashed the subpoenas and search warrants and ordered the return of all seized property. He did not.
• The opinion concludes with another reprimand of the special prosecutor:
Our lengthy discussion of these three cases can be distilled into a few simple, but important, points. It is utterly clear that the special prosecutor has employed theories of law that do not exist in order to investigate citizens who were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing. In other words, the special prosecutor was the instigator of a “perfect storm” of wrongs that was visited upon the innocent Unnamed Movants and those who dared to associate with them."..
To be fair, I suspect there was some degree of coordination going on between the Walker campaign and the advocacy groups.
As there is no doubt between the various progressive groups and the campaigns of the candidates on their side.
The question is whether the WI groups crossed the edge between legal and illegal. And, of course, the methods used in this investigation are unconstitutional on their face.
The Daily Beast gives liberals a platform to whine about the recent John Doe decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court favoring Scott Walker.
FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.
Be sure to read about it [222 investigative articles]. There is a LOT of information, so that you don't need to speculate.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-primaries/248292-trump-leads-another-2016-poll
“Businessman Donald Trump continues to lead the Republican presidential field, but a newcomer to the race is hot on his trail.
Trump took 18 percent support in a national Fox News poll released Thursday evening. Right behind him is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker with 15 percent.
Walker officially launched his campaign Monday, declaring to supporters, “I will fight and win for you.”
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush dropped to third place, garnering 14 percent support.
In the previous edition of the Fox News poll, released June 15, Bush led the field with 15 percent, followed by Trump at 11 percent, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 10 percent, and Walker and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) tied at 9 percent.
Paul checked in at fourth place in the new survey at 8 percent, followed by Sen. Marco Rubio at 7 percent and Carson at 6 percent.
Following them are Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 4 percent, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 3 percent.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Sen. Rick Santorum are tied for tenth at 2 percent.
Tenth place is a key spot, as Fox News’ Aug. 6 debate will be limited to the top ten candidates based on an average of polls. Candidates are pulling out all the stops to climb the polls for a shot at the stage.
Former CEO Carly Fiorina, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former New York Gov. George Pataki all fell outside the top ten in the poll.
The poll surveyed 1,019 registered voters between July 13-15. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.”
Judges who should have recused themselves from an important case.
Where have I heard that before recently?
Hmmm
Chisholm should be wearing an orange jumpsuit.
Democrats are EVIL and will stop at nothing to win and destroy their opponents.
So the lawfare bullies have their own shenanigans pulled on them and “now” they say it’s not fair.
So, you resort to lies. Walker could not touch this; this was designed to protect people and their identities (but Chisholm used it to silence the victims of his political vendetta). No one could stop this 4 year witch hunt but the court.
Wrong again.
Former Walker aide to file civil rights lawsuit against John Doe prosecutor (WI)
And Archer, like Rindfleisch has, expressed her disappointment in Walker’s team for leaving her for dead on the brutal political battlefield.
“Worst of all, I have discovered that my demotion as Gov. Walker’s deputy director of administration, which came four weeks before the raid on my house, appears to have been engineered by the governor’s team after word reached them that I had been targeted by the district attorney. Subsequently, I have not been given any role in the administration that may bring public attention,” Archer writes.
—“This is our state,” he continued. “And hey, if Walker keeps going, this will be the country.”—
He say this like it’s something bad.
I wouldn’t put any more credence in her comment than all the other comments coming out early on.
This was all being done in secret and no one knew who was being targeted or why.
But you will do what you always do, make anti-Walker posts.
Dude: Sometimes soldiers fall on the field. Not being asked back to the political team is the price that sometimes has to be paid. It’s not like Walker left them rotting in jail.
; )
DId Walker garner 103% of the vote in given precincts? I don’t want to hear anything about “coordination” as long as Obama and progressive groups have been spared scrutiny, not to mention the issue with IRS targeting of conservative groups has still not been fully prosecuted.
That does not disprove that Walker was subject to the John Doe secrecy mandates. If Walker makes a wrong step the headlines are: “Walker indicted for John Doe gag violation”.
As it was there were years of leaks from the prosecutor’s side trying Walker in the press that couldn’t be answered.
We no longer live in a country where the press would fairly wait for the process to complete or insist on a fair process.
Well, you can keep your head buried in the sand if you wish, but your guy Walker is not the honest Conservative you think he is.
Lol.
I’ll stick with Walker.
Thanks.
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