Gov Walker Implicated In Criminal Conspiracy To Violate Election Laws

Another Repub governor and potential 2016 Presidential candidate* gets the Christie treatment....

http://www.mail.com/news/politics/2...lker-criminal-scheme.html#.7518-stage-hero1-2

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, coordinated fundraising with conservative groups as part of a nationwide "criminal scheme" to violate election laws, prosecutors said in court documents unsealed Thursday.

No charges have been filed against Walker or any member of his staff. The documents were filed in December as part of an ongoing lawsuit by the conservative group Wisconsin Club for Growth, which challenged a secret investigation into campaign fundraising coordination.

The investigation began in 2012 as Walker was facing a recall election, but has been on hold since May when a federal judge ruled it was a breach of the group's free-speech rights and temporarily halted the probe.

State prosecutors said in the December filing that Walker, his former chief of staff Keith Gilkes, top adviser R.J. Johnson and others were discussing illegal fundraising and coordination with a number of national groups and prominent figures, including GOP strategist Karl Rove.

"Two judges have rejected the characterizations disclosed in those documents," Walker's campaign spokeswoman Alleigh Marre said in a statement, referring to previous rulings favorable to the governor and others under investigation.

Marre also said that because Walker is not a party to the federal lawsuit the campaign has no control over any documents that are released. The court document quotes an email Walker sent to Rove on May 4, 2011, in which he talks about the important role Johnson played in leading the coordination effort.

"Bottom-line: R.J. helps keep in place a team that is wildly successful in Wisconsin," the quoted email from Walker said. "We are running 9 recall elections and it will be like 9 congressional markets in every market in the state (and Twin Cities)."

Johnson, in addition to being Walker's top campaign strategist, also was an adviser for Wisconsin Club for Growth. He did not immediately return a message left on his cellphone. Prosecutors, including Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and Schmitz, have appealed to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Gilkes did not return a message placed on his cellphone. While he eyes a run for president in 2016, Walker is seeking re-election this year against likely Democratic nominee Mary Burke. Both Gilkes and Johnson are working on his re-election campaign.

It's been known for months that the investigation, known as a John Doe, focused on allegations of illegal coordination between Wisconsin Club for Growth, Walker's campaign and other conservative groups during recall elections in 2011 and 2012.

But until Thursday it wasn't clear that prosecutors saw Walker as having such a central role. "The scope of the criminal scheme under investigation is expansive," Schmitz wrote in the Dec. 9 court filing, objecting to an attempt by Walker's campaign and other conservative groups to quash subpoenas. "It includes criminal violations of multiple elections laws" including filing false campaign finance reports, Schmitz wrote.

Wisconsin Club for Growth attorney Andrew Grossman argued the public has the right to see the documents. "These documents show how the John Doe prosecutors adopted a blatantly unconstitutional interpretation of Wisconsin law that they used to launch a secret criminal investigation targeting conservatives throughout Wisconsin," Grossman said in an email Thursday. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and this is a story that needs to be told to prevent more abuses and to hold the John Doe prosecutors accountable for violating the rights of Wisconsinites."

An attorney for prosecutors, Sam Leib, did not immediately return an email seeking comment. Prosecutors have defended the investigation as a legitimate probe into whether Wisconsin's campaign finance laws had been violated. They have rejected the argument that they were on a partisan witch hunt.

Walker rose to fame shortly after taking office in 2011, passing a bill that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers. The uproar over that law led to Walker's recall election in 2012, which he won, making him the first governor in U.S. history to ever defeat a recall

*personally, I never really saw him as a strong contender for the office

 

I’m going to tell you a true story, and then tell you how the news media is covering it.

This is a true story: in 2012, Democratic district attorneys in Wisconsin launched a secret probe known as a John Doe investigation with the goal of proving that conservative groups illegally coordinated activities during Gov. Scott Walker’s recall election. They issued more than 100 subpoenas, demanded the private information of conservatives and conservative groups, and actually conducted secret raids. And under state law, individuals who were targeted or witness to the investigation were forbidden from making knowledge of it public.

Fortunately, judges saw right through this partisan abuse of power. Early this year, a state judge, ruling in a secret proceeding, quashed the subpoenas and all but ended the investigation. According to the judge, “the subpoenas do not show probable cause that the moving parties committed any violations of the campaign finance laws.” This started the unraveling of the John Doe investigation that had many conservatives fearing they would be targeted for subpoenas and raids next.

In February, a conservative activist and group filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the partisan district attorneys who had pursued the John Doe probe. In short order, a federal district court judge held that the plaintiffs “are likely to succeed on their claim that the defendants‘ investigation violates their rights under the First Amendment, such that the investigation was commenced and conducted ―without a reasonable expectation of obtaining a valid conviction.” In other words, at this early stage of the civil rights litigation, it looks to the judge as if the Democratic district attorneys abused their power and chilled conservatives’ free speech rights. Accordingly, the federal judge ordered that the John Doe probe must cease, all the seized property be returned, and all copies of materials be destroyed.

After a short trip to a federal appeals court, the federal judge reissued his order that the John Doe probe cease. Most recently, that appeals court has ordered some of the previously secret probe documents disclosed to the public, including an unsuccessful defense that the John Doe investigators made to one of their secret subpoenas. In their attempt to get a subpoena, which was rejected by a judge for lacking probable cause, the partisan investigators claimed that Walker was involved in the so-called conservative conspiracy.

And that is where the litigation stands as of today. Having launched a secret probe that has now been shut down by both the state and federal courts, the Democratic district attorneys find themselves the subject of an ongoing civil rights lawsuit for infringing the First Amendment rights of conservatives. But that is not how the media have reported the case.

Upon the unsealing of some of the probe documents by the federal appeals court, the media worked itself into a frenzy claiming that Walker was part of a criminal conspiracy. The media claim was based entirely on the subpoena document that was denied by the state judge as failing utterly to demonstrate probable cause to believe a crime occurred. In short: the judge, looking at all the evidence, found no reason to believe that a crime had occurred. That has not stopped the media from falsely implying otherwise.

This is largely accomplished by playing with verb tense. For example, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel kicked off this infuriating libel with a piece that claimed, “John Doe prosecutors allege Scott Walker at center of ‘criminal scheme.’” The more accurate word, of course, would have been “alleged,” past-tense with the addition of the words “in denied subpoena request” or perhaps “in failed partisan investigation” or even “in politically-motivated secret investigation rejected by the state and federal courts.”

The New York Times, trumpeting the story on today’s front page, also uses the present tense to give the wrong impression. The piece begins “Prosecutors in Wisconsin assert that Gov. Scott Walker was part of an elaborate effort to illegally coordinate fund-raising and spending.” Again, the true story is that this took place last year and was ended by the courts. You’d have to read all the way down to the tenth paragraph to learn that the subpoenas weren’t granted because there was no probable cause to believe that a crime had occurred. Oddly, the Times piece muses on the electoral consequences for Walker in the third paragraph.

The media obsession with Walker is no coincidence. Liberals are still stinging from their failure to recall him in 2012 after he successfully curtailed union abuses. And they sense that he could be a formidable contender for the White House in 2016. That the John Doe probe simultaneously harms him, suggests widespread wrongdoing by conservatives, and raises the campaign finance bugaboo makes this story the almost-perfect storm. The inconvenient fact that the investigation was cooked up for partisan purposes, has now ceased, and has impelled a federal civil rights lawsuit will go unmentioned in the papers.

http://thefederalist.com/2014/06/20/a-basic-primer-on-the-scott-walker-case-for-ignorant-reporters/

 

This is part of a continuing pattern of democrats misusimng the campaign finance laws to attack prominent republicans.

They have ruined countless promising republicans, from Sarah Palin to Tom Delay to Bob McConnell.

Republicans are handicapped by their own integrity. the only way to combat this is to fight fire with fire. Republican prosecutors have to go out and nail a few democrats. As corrupt as the democrats are, it shouldn't be all that difficult.

Once again, we are frustrated by spineless, wimpy republicans who play by a totally different set of rules than the democrats.

 

So if you keep losing then you can feel good because you're so noble, but if you stop losing then you can feel good because you're winning.

 

I thought i would just come to this thread, since it was a bogus story promoted by the media, to ask if Salon has become the go to site for the nuttiest left wing stories attacking republicans. They seem to be going for top prize.

 

Think about it this way. As Obama and the Democratic party get less and less popular, and things like the VA or the IRS keep coming to light, the more moderate outlets are going to begin to get more and more quiet as they come to the realization that they might have backed the wrong horse. The rabid moonbats, however, are going to get louder and louder as they do everything they possibly can to desperately change the country's talking points.

 

You are correct in your assessment that the radical left will just shout louder. In light of this we should detail what Obama has done from his initial campaign until today before we launch our own campaign. I found this and thought it fundamentally correct.

Allow me to summarize Obama's campaign and 6 years in office: Lie, golf, blame Bush, vacation, golf, play the race card, lie, blame Bush, Hawaii, lie, party in Hollywood, deceive, lie, golf, executive order, golf, raise taxes, Tonight Show, lie, lie, party with Jay-Z, golf, vacation, party, golf, lie, distort, lie, golf, The View, executive order, golf, lie, executive privilege, fund raise, Las Vegas, golf, raise taxes, lie, scandal, lie, Hawaii, golf, blame Bush, vacation, play the race card, lie, vacation, lie, blame Bush, golf, lie, lie, scandal, blame Republicans, scandal, lie, raise taxes, deceive, golf, vacation, fund raise, golf, party, golf, lie, lie, lie, golf, scandal, scandal, lie, scandal, lie, golf, vacation, lie, lie, distort, lie, lie, fund raise, lie, deceive, golf, golf, lie, scandal, lie, scandal, golf, vacation, golf, vacation, lie, scandal, blame Republicans, blame Fox News, lie, lie, golf, vacation.

 

It's a horse race between them and either the NYTimes or WaPo.

 

Liberals, both in the media and politics, learned a useful lesson during the Clinton administration. If they invented a pretend reality and all acted as if it were true, it became true. It came to full fruition under Obama. He is constantly portrayed as a masterful politician and policy expert despite reams of evidence to the contrary. Hillary is regularly described as one of the great Secretaries of State ever, despite even more abundant evidence that she was a complete and utter disaster.

This pretend reality strategy can only be derailed if there are respected people around who actually participated in the events in question and loudly call the media's version BS. Like Bergdahl's former unit did when he was being called a hero. Or John Kerry's boatmates.

You can understand why the media attack those naysayers so ferociously. They are not just on the wrong side, they are threatening the very fabric of history.