Milwaukee County DA: John Doe Transcripts released

View the recently released court transcript at https://milwaukeenewspolitics.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/50doedocs.pdf

Anti-union governor eyed in criminal fundraising probe
By SCOTT BAUER
Associated Press
Thursday, June 19, 2014
(Published in print: Friday, June 20, 2014)
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MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, took part in a nationwide criminal scheme to coordinate fundraising with conservative groups, prosecutors said in court documents unsealed Thursday.

No charges have been filed against Walker or any member of his staff. And both sides are arguing in court over whether the activities are covered by election laws. The documents for the first time put Walker himself at the center of an investigation into campaigns in 2011 and 2012.

The papers were filed in December as part of an investigation into fundraising involving Walker and his campaign, the Wisconsin Club for Growth, the state Chamber of Commerce and other groups.

The investigation began in 2012 as Walker, who rose to fame by passing a bill that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers, was facing a recall election. But the probe has been on hold since May, when a federal judge ruled it was a breach of Wisconsin Club for Growth’s free-speech rights and temporarily halted it.

State prosecutors said in the December filing that Walker, former chief of staff Keith Gilkes, top adviser R.J. Johnson and campaign operative Deborah Jordahl discussed illegal fundraising and coordination with national political groups and prominent Republican figures, including GOP strategist Karl Rove.

“The scope of the criminal scheme under investigation is expansive,” lead prosecutor Francis Schmitz wrote in a 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.

Walker suggested that the documents mean little or nothing, given that his campaign’s position has already prevailed twice in court.

“I’m not asking people to take my word for it, or political allies,” the governor said. “I’m saying look at two independent judges, at both the state and federal level, who did not buy those arguments and were rather aggressive in telling those folks to stop proceeding with that because they didn’t think it was right.”

The uproar over the collective-bargaining law led to the recall, which Walker won, making him the first governor in U.S. history to ever defeat a recall.

“The evidence shows an extensive coordination scheme that pervaded nearly every aspect of the campaign activities” during 2011 elections that decided control of the state Senate and the 2012 recall election, Schmitz said in the December filing.

Under Wisconsin law, third-party political groups are allowed to work together on campaign activity, but they are barred from coordinating that work with actual candidates. The Wisconsin Club for Growth has argued the prohibition does not apply to them because they do not specifically tell people how to vote, or run ads with phrases like “vote for” a certain candidate. The federal judge who halted the investigation and the judge overseeing it both agreed with that argument.

Prosecutors, including Schmitz and Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, have appealed the matter to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. Chisholm is a Democrat, and Schmitz has described himself as a Republican who voted for Walker.

Both men have declined to comment about the probe, which is sanctioned under a law that allows prosecutors to compel people to testify and turn over documents, but bars them from discussing the matter publicly.

Prosecutors say the national Club for Growth raised concerns about potential illegal coordination with the Wisconsin group and Walker’s campaign as early as 2009. A spokesman for the national group declined to comment.

Johnson, in addition to being Walker’s top campaign strategist, was also an adviser for the Wisconsin Club for Growth.

Neither he, nor Gilkes or Jordahl immediately returned messages seeking comment left by The Associated Press.

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.

Prosecutors had sought the release of the documents, and the Wisconsin Club for Growth did not object.

It’s been known for months that the investigation focused on allegations of illegal coordination between the Wisconsin club, Walker’s campaign and other conservative groups. But until Thursday, it was not clear that prosecutors saw Walker as having a central role.

Wisconsin Club for Growth attorney Andrew Grossman said the public has the right to see the documents.

The papers show how prosecutors “adopted a blatantly unconstitutional interpretation of Wisconsin law that they used to launch a secret criminal investigation targeting conservatives throughout Wisconsin,” Grossman said Thursday in an email. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and this is a story that needs to be told to prevent more abuses and to hold … prosecutors accountable for violating the rights of Wisconsinites.”

Prosecutors have defended the investigation as a legitimate probe into whether Wisconsin’s campaign-finance laws were violated and denied that they were on a partisan witch hunt.

An attorney for prosecutors, Sam Leib, said the filings show that prosecutors were legally justified in their actions and “the process continues.”

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Associated Press writer Dinesh Ramde contributed to this report from Brookfield, Wisconsin.

WSJ – Milwaukee County Free Speech

The feds get one right
Posted on May 13, 2014 by Steve Prestegard

The Wall Street Journal:

The four-year effort by Democratic prosecutors to criminalize political speech in Wisconsin has hit the wall of the U.S. Constitution. In a ruling that could have consequences nationwide, federal judge Rudolph Randa issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday ending the secret John Doe probe of allies of Governor Scott Walker.

We’ve been telling you for months about the secret Wisconsin John Doe, which operates like a grand jury and forces targets to remain silent. The targets are right-of-center groups disliked by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, his special prosecutor Francis Schmitz, and the left-leaning state Government Accountability Board that regulates campaign finance.

Prosecutors were able to leak details with impunity until one of the targets, Eric O’Keefe, went public to us last November about the abuse of power. He also sought Washington attorney David Rivkin to file a federal civil-rights lawsuit to shut down the probe, and that’s what Judge Randa responded to [last] Tuesday.

Prosecutors had justified their dawn raids and harassment in the name of exposing illegal coordination between the Walker campaign and conservative groups. But Judge Randa ruled that the investigation was based on a mistaken reading of campaign-finance law that violated Mr. O’Keefe’s First Amendment’s rights. “The defendants are pursuing criminal charges through a secret John Doe investigation against the plaintiffs for exercising issue advocacy speech rights that on their face are not subject to the regulations or statutes the defendants seek to enforce,” the judge wrote.

Mr. O’Keefe, director of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, had merely advocated for issues he cares about, which is protected speech. “O’Keefe and the Club obviously agree with Governor Walker’s policies,” the judge added, “but coordinated ads in favor of those policies carry no risk of corruption because the Club’s interests are already aligned with Walker and other conservative politicians.”

It’s worth noting that Judge Randa is the second judge to find that the prosecutors are wrong on the law. In January Wisconsin Judge Gregory Peterson quashed subpoenas that he ruled were based on a misreading of campaign-finance law. Prosecutors are appealing Judge Peterson’s ruling, which we told you about on Jan. 13 though it is under John Doe seal.

It’s worth noting that prosecutors would still be continuing their harassment without legal or political accountability if not for Mr. O’Keefe’s willingness to go public—at considerable personal risk. Mr. Chisholm and his deputy, Bruce Landgraf, are noted Democrat partisans with a vindictive streak.

Whether or not they ever brought charges, they also knew their probe would effectively shut down center-right spending as Mr. Walker and Republicans try to win re-election this year. The Wisconsin Club for Growth spent some $8 million on advertising or grants to other groups in 2012 during the recall campaign against Mr. Walker. In 2013 it spent $1.7 million but has been silent since the John Doe subpoenas hit in October.

Similar damage has been done to conservative groups across the state. According to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce spent some $4 million during the recall campaign in 2012, but aside from a small local radio campaign about an asbestos trust issue this year, the group has been off the air.

Like the IRS targeting of conservative nonprofits, the Wisconsin John Doe shows how campaign-finance laws have become a liberal weapon to silence political opponents. Prosecutors claim to be fighting the risk of corruption from “dark money” in politics. But their enforcement attempts, done in secret and unrestrained by Constitutional guardrails, have become far more politically corrupting.

George S. Will:

The prosecutors’ cynical manipulation of Wisconsin’s campaign laws is more than the mere appearance of corruption. Eric O’Keefe’s refusal to be intimidated by lawless law-enforcement officials produced Randa’sremarkably emphatic ruling against an especially egregious example of Democrats using government power to suppress conservatives’ political speech.

Wisconsin’s sordid episode began, appropriately, with a sound of tyranny — fists pounding on the doors of private citizens in pre-dawn raids. While sheriff’s deputies used floodlights to illuminate the citizens’ homes, armed raiders seized documents, computers, cell phones, and other devices.

As a director of Wisconsin Club for Growth, which advocates limited government, O’Keefe had participated in his state’s 2012 debate surrounding attempts by Democrats and state and national government-employee unions to recall Republican governor Scott Walker and some state senators. The recalls were intended as punishment for legislation limiting the unions’ collective-bargaining rights.

Walker prevailed. The Democratic prosecutors, however, seeking to cripple his 2014 reelection campaign and to damage him as a potential 2016 presidential aspirant, have resorted to a sinister Wisconsin process called a “John Doe investigation.” It has focused on the activities of O’Keefe and 28 other conservative individuals or organizations.

In such investigations, prosecutors can promiscuously issue subpoenas and conduct searches. The identities of the targets are kept secret, and the targets are silenced by gag orders, thereby preventing public discussion of the process. Thus John Doe investigations are effective government instruments of disruption and intimidation. …

O’Keefe and the other harassed conservatives had engaged only in issue advocacy, not express advocacy. That is, they had not urged the election of specific candidates. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that government regulation of political speech is permissible only to prevent quid pro quo corruption — money purchasing political favors — resulting from express advocacy. Hence there is no justification for the prosecutors’ punitive investigation of O’Keefe’s and others’ issue advocacy. As Randa said, this hasno “taint of quid pro quo corruption” and thus “is not subject to regulation.”

The Democratic prosecutors must know this. Again, they ignore it because their aim is mayhem, not law enforcement. Their activity is entirely about suffocating conservative activity. Because the prosecutors know Wisconsin law, they are patently disingenuous in arguing that O’Keefe and others illegally “coordinated” their advocacy with Walker and other candidates or campaigns. Randa said “the record seems to validate” O’Keefe’s and the others’ denial of coordination.

Besides, and even more important, Randa said his court “need not make that type of factual finding.” Wisconsin law forbids coordination between third-party groups, such as O’Keefe’s, and candidates only for express advocacy, and Randa said “it is undisputed” that O’Keefe and his group engaged only in issue advocacy. The prosecutors’ indifference to this is their corruption.

Liberals inveighing against “dark money” in politics mean money contributed anonymously to finance political advocacy. Donors’ anonymity thwarts liberals’ efforts to injure the livelihoods of identifiable conservatives by punishing them for their political participation and thereby deterring others from participating.

O’Keefe’s persecution illustrates the problem his lawyer David Rivkin calls “dark power” — government power wielded secretively for vengeance and intimidation. Judge Randa quoted the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens Uniteddecision: The First Amendment is “premised on mistrust of governmental power.” And he noted that “the danger always exists that the high purpose of campaign regulation and its enforcement may conceal self-interest.”

Randa is insufficiently mistrustful. Campaign regulation, although invariably swathed in lofty rhetoric, is designed to disguise regulation’s low purpose, which is to handicap political rivals. If Wisconsin is serious about eliminating political corruption, it can begin by eliminating corrupt prosecutors and processes, and the speech regulations that encourage both.