Quelle Surprise, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker Accused ???
If you have been watching the ongoing saga unfolding in Wisconsin on Governor Scott Walker and his recall election and election shenanigans, it probably comes as no surprise there was fire where there was smoke.
“Prosecutors allege Gov. Scott Walker was at the center of an effort to illegally coordinate fund” raising among conservative groups to help his campaign and those of Republican state senators facing recall elections during 2011 and ’12, according to documents unsealed Thursday.
In the documents, prosecutors lay out what they call an extensive ‘criminal scheme’ to bypass state election laws by Walker, his campaign and two top Republican political operatives — R.J. Johnson and Deborah Jordahl. This marks the first time prosecutors have disclosed the details of their probe.”
Mind you, this did not happen in the last day or so. This has been an ongoing John Doe investigation in 2014 (and earlier) which Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Club for Growth have been attempting to quash. Wisconsin District Judge Randa agreed with Walker’s group and ordered all documentation destroyed. The case was appealed to the 7th District COA where Judge Easterbrook and two other judges over ruled Randa. “Federal Judge Rudolf Randa is a member of the Federalist Society and his wife donated often to Walkers campaign. Judge Randa’s Judicial Assistant is the wife of Scott Walkers lawyer.” Hey, its all in the family.
“Federal Appeals Judge Frank Easterbrook unsealed the court documents Thursday as he reviews a lawsuit attempting to end the John Doe probe. Two unnamed individuals this week tried to intervene in the case to prevent the release of the records, but Easterbrook rebuffed their request.” I wonder who that could be?
One alleged Scott Walker email with Karl Rove was released by Easterbrook in the ~250 pages.
“The documents include an excerpt from an email in which Walker tells Karl Rove, former top adviser to President George W. Bush, that Johnson would lead the coordination campaign. Johnson is also Walker’s longtime campaign strategist and the chief adviser to Wisconsin Club for Growth, a conservative group active in the recall elections.’
‘Bottom line: R.J. helps keep in place a team that is wildly successful in Wisconsin,” Walker wrote to Rove. “We are running 9 recall elections and it will be like running 9 Congressional markets in every market in the state (and Twin Cities.)'” No crime there yet; but, it is a smoking gun.
Walker and the Wisconsin Club for Growth are accusing the state prosecutors of violating their rights to freedom of speech due to the gathering of this information which reveals the names of donators to pro-Republican/Conservative funds. They accuse the prosecutors of violating the same elections laws they are accused of doing.
The 7th District COA with Judge Easterbrook as the chief judge of a panel of three is reviewing the case. Like Posner, Easterbrook is not so easily swayed by politics. It should get interesting.
References:
Prosecutors Allege Scott Walker At Center Of Campaign Finance Criminal Conspiracy, Huffington Post
John Doe prosecutors allege Scott Walker at center of ‘criminal scheme, Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel
And they elected him TWICE (just like Bush@Cheney) one of which was a RECALL!!!
I STILL CONTEND that shoveling horseshit IS the infallible way to win an American Election.
Why do you say Posner is not swayed by politics?
I get the impression he is more into transparency. I listen to Bev a lot. I also know he followed me for a bit after I answered one of his posts with my economic reasoning.
Shit just got real. “Scott Walker Involved in Criminal Scheme” is currently the BANNER headline on the front page of 18 Wisconsin newspaper sites. The breath and depth of the coverage is simply devastating. The story is engulfing Walker across the entire state, from cities to suburbia to even rural farm country.
Note at Daily Kos with screenshots……
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/19/1308230/-Wisconsin-Firestorm-Engulfing-Walker?
Coool, Dan. I just discussed it in the last part of a long post I posted this afternoon, at http://angrybearblog.strategydemo.com/2014/06/chris-cillizza-misses-the-point-the-most-important-point-anyway.html#more-25104. I predict the outcome in the Supreme Court! (This prescience thing among Bears must be contagious. At least the attempt at prescience is.)
Bill and Jack,
Ewwwe. No, in our email exchange yesterday, after you told me you had posted about the breaking news about our, um, favorite governor, but before I read your post, I said that the judge who ordered those unredacted documents made public has long been opposed to the idea of sealed court documents, so yesterday’s order didn’t surprise me. I also said that he’s all for transparency except about such things as whether one judge falsifies the names of other judges on orders (including, in one instance, an unpublished resolution of the appeal) that the judges whose names appeared on the orders along with the falsifier were not aware of, until that kind of thing became impossible to do due to the advent of law blogs and to a key change in a procedural rule in 2004.
Okay, well, I didn’t detail it, but then, I knew you knew what I had in mind.
I’m glad he opted for transparency in that order yesterday, but the secret would-be intervenors who were asking for the emergency injunction were doing so on flagrantly ridiculous grounds: that identifying them and releasing the documents would violate their free-speech rights–and this judge risked nothing personal by doing that. Both he and Posner are well past the age at which they are considered contenders for nomination to the Supreme Court–but both were, for more than two decades, entrants in the nomination-to-the-Supreme-Court contest. Posner’s 75 now, so his aggressive, very public defense of the outcome of Bush v. Gore 14 years ago was his last gasp, if not maybe just a remnant. That said, neither one is even remotely on a par with Rudolph Randa, the judge whose order was reversed yesterday, on the brazenly-political spectrum.
Neither Posner nor the other appellate judge ever distinguished between the role of a judge and that of a law professor, and one effect is that they’ve proudly made extreme obnoxiousness a hallmark of their judicial tenures.
I initially didn’t want to address that part of your post, Bill, but I want to clarify my opinion about about these judges.
(My Chromebook doesn’t let me respond to a comment directly below the comment I’m responding to, which is why this response is in the regular thread chronologically rather than directly below your comment, Bill.)