Who was the reporter outside Cindy Archer’s house? [Wisconsin blockbuster raids story]

MADISON, Wis. – Of all of the frightening accounts of government abuses in Wisconsin’s political John Doe investigation, David French’s description in National Review of the early-morning raid on Cindy Archer’s home may be the most stunning.

But there are two nearly forgettable lines in French’s retelling of the raid that reveal volumes about the secret investigations aimed at bringing down Wisconsin’s conservative activist community.

Archer, French writes, “looked outside and saw a person who appeared to be a reporter. Someone had tipped him off.”

Supporters of the Democrat-launched political John Doe probes into conservatives have argued secrecy is key to its success, denouncing any leaks that undermine the prosecutors’ case. But Archer’s suspicion that a reporter was present was apparently right – and indicates that secrecy is a tactic rather than a principle: a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article published on the day of the raid, Sept. 14, 2011, indicates that a Journal Sentinel reporter arrived in time to see “about a dozen law enforcement officers, including FBI agents” raid Archer’s home. At the same time, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and his assistants were digging up what they could on the Milwaukee County Executive’s office. Walker, a Republican, led the county office for several years before being elected Wisconsin’s governor in November 2010. The DA, a Democrat, used information gathered in that probe to launch his investigation into what became a multi-county investigation into 29 conservative groups and Walker’s campaign. Chisholm’s office worked alongside the state Government Accountability Board, John Doe special prosecutor Francis Schmitz and a very willing John Doe Judge appointed at the direction of Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson to go after the conservatives and their constitutionally protected donor lists.

And the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had a front-row seat when the “law enforcement action” went down.

“Around 9 a.m., a reporter saw four FBI agents – two of them wearing latex gloves – talking in Archer’s backyard before going into her house. Later, one removed a large box and put it in the trunk of an FBI car. They left about 10 a.m,” the Journal Sentinel story reported.

“The FBI also seized the hard drive from a computer that a neighbor had bought from Archer six to eight weeks ago at a garage sale.”

Archer, like several other subjects of the probe who have spoken to Wisconsin Watchdog and National Review, has never been charged with any wrongdoing.

“I’m not worried,” Archer told the Wisconsin State Journal following the raid. “I don’t even have a lawyer. I don’t need a lawyer. I did nothing inappropriate.” But the Journal Sentinel’s story from 2011 remains a part of the public record.

“Sources have said the investigation has increasingly focused on the activities of Archer and Tom Nardelli, Walker’s former county chief of staff,” the newspaper reported.

Nardelli, who died last year, was never charged with any wrongdoing. In fact, it was Nardelli who, representing Walker, brought to Chisholm’s office a problem: a discrepancy in a Milwaukee County veterans fund. Walker’s concern that the fund had been ripped-off became the initial reason for the secret probe. But from that point, Chisholm’s prosecutors operated on a grander theory: that this opening providing them with an excuse to investigate relationships between Walker and Wisconsin’s conservatives.

Local and national media seized on the red meat of a possible Walker-related “illegal scheme.” Selective leaks from the prosecutors drove the drumbeat of stories.

Daniel Bice, the Journal Sentinel’s investigative columnist who broke several stories in the first John Doe political probe, has vehemently denied that his sources are inside the Milwaukee County DA’s office.

“If I started outing my sources, I wouldn’t have very many sources, would I?” Bice said during an online chat with readers in January 2012. He was responding to this question: “Who is illegally leaking information to you from the secret John Doe probe?”

“I have said in other forums that I don’t know of anyone who broke the law by talking to me for my stories. That remains true.”

But Bice certainly sounded like a soothsayer when asked in the same chat whether there would be more arrests in the probe.

“Yes and soon. But, of course, ‘soon’ is a relative term when you’re talking about a 20-month investigation.”

Bice’s crystal ball – or perhaps his source information – was broken. There were no more arrests in the first secret John Doe investigation that spanned nearly three years.

In the National Review piece, French lays out the myriad civil rights assaults on targets of the secret probes into dozens of conservative organizations, the campaign of Gov. Scott Walker, and his former aides and associates.

In French’s account of the raid on the home of Archer – a top aide to Walker and architect of Act 10, the 2011 law that reformed Wisconsin’s public sector collective bargaining laws – you can feel the panicked heartbeat of fear.

Archer was “jolted awake by yelling, loud pounding at the door, and her dogs’ frantic barking,” French writes.

“She looked outside to see up to a dozen police, yelling to open the door. They were carrying a battering ram. She wasn’t dressed, but she started to run toward the door, her body in full view of the police. Some yelled at her to grab some clothes, others yelled for her to open the door.

French describes a startled woman grabbing her clothes and dressing in front of police as she opened the door.

“I begged and begged, ‘Please don’t shoot my dogs, please don’t shoot my dogs, just don’t shoot my dogs.’ I couldn’t get them to stop barking, and I couldn’t get them outside quick enough. I saw a gun and barking dogs. I was scared and knew this was a bad mix,” Archer told French.

Wisconsin Watchdog, in its continuing investigative series, “Wisconsin’s Secret War,” has chronicled many of the abuses of the subjects, who have asked to remain anonymous due to the probe’s gag order that comes with possible jail time for violators. But Archer’s account is the first time a John Doe subject of the raids has spoken out, simultaneously corroborating Wisconsin Watchdog’s accounts and contradicting the accounts of John Doe prosecutors who have tried to discount the violence of the investigation, even placing quotes around the word “raids” in the government’s court filings.

“......The investigation not only damaged families, it also shut down their free speech. In many cases, the investigations halted conservative groups in their tracks. O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth described the effect in court filings:

>>>O’Keefe’s associates began cancelling meetings with him and declining to take his calls, reasonably fearful that merely associating with him could make them targets of the investigation. O’Keefe was forced to abandon fundraising for the Club because he could no longer guarantee to donors that their identities would remain confidential, could not (due to the Secrecy Order) explain to potential donors the nature of the investigation, could not assuage donors’ fears that they might become targets themselves, and could not assure donors that their money would go to fund advocacy rather than legal expenses. The Club was also paralyzed. Its officials could not associate with its key supporters, and its funds were depleted. It could not engage in issue advocacy for fear of criminal sanction.<<<

These raids and subpoenas were often based not on traditional notions of probable cause but on mere suspicion, untethered to the law or evidence, and potentially violating the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” The very existence of First Amendment–protected expression was deemed to be evidence of illegality. The prosecution simply assumed that the conservatives were incapable of operating within the bounds of the law.

Even worse, many of the investigators’ legal theories, even if proven by the evidence, would not have supported criminal prosecutions. In other words, they were investigating “crimes” that weren’t crimes at all.

If the prosecutors had applied the same legal standards to the Democrats in their own offices, they would have been forced to turn the raids on themselves. If the prosecutors and investigators had been raided, how many of their computers and smartphones would have contained incriminating information indicating use of government resources for partisan purposes?

With the investigations now bursting out into the open, some conservatives began to fight back. O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth moved to quash the John Doe subpoenas aimed at them. In a surprise move, Judge Kluka, who had presided over the Doe investigations for more than a year, recused herself from the case. (A political journal, the Wisconsin Reporter, attempted to speak to Judge Kluka about her recusal, but she refused to offer comment.)

The new judge in the case, Gregory Peterson, promptly sided with O’Keefe and blocked multiple subpoenas, holding (in a sealed opinion obtained by the Wall Street Journal, which has done invaluable work covering the John Doe investigations) that they “do not show probable cause that the moving parties committed any violations of the campaign finance laws.” The judge noted that “the State is not claiming that any of the independent organizations expressly advocated” Walker’s election.

O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth followed up Judge Peterson’s ruling by filing a federal lawsuit against Chisholm and a number of additional defendants, alleging multiple constitutional violations, including a claim that the investigation constituted unlawful retaliation against the plaintiffs for the exercise of their First Amendment rights. United States District Court judge Rudolph Randa promptly granted the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, declaring that “the Defendants must cease all activities related to the investigation, return all property seized in the investigation from any individual or organization, and permanently destroy all copies of information and other materials obtained through the investigation.”

From that point forward, the case proceeded on parallel state and federal tracks. At the federal level, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Randa’s order. Declining to consider the case on the merits, the appeals court found the lawsuit barred by the federal Anti-Injunction Act, which prohibits federal courts from issuing injunctions against some state-court proceedings. O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth have petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari and expect a ruling in a matter of weeks.

At the same time, the John Doe prosecutors took their case to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals to attempt to restart the Doe proceedings. The case was ultimately consolidated before the state supreme court, with a ruling also expected in a matter of weeks. “.... http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3281035/posts

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