Monday, July 7, 2014

How Much Will John Doe Affect The Gubernatorial Race?

While the John Doe investigation and legal proceedings are complex and elaborately intertwined, there are basically three areas that bear watching, at least for the time being.

Two of these areas lie in the federal courts, one being with the corrupt Rudolph Randa and the other with the Seventh Circuit Appellate Court.

A few weeks ago, the appellate court redacted and released some of the court papers regarding the investigation. The information that was revealed in those papers were breathtaking.  It not only revealed the groups that the investigators were looking into, but also revealed that Scott Walker was deeply involved with the coordination between his campaign, the campaigns of other Republicans and the Dark Money groups that were laundering the money that they use to help buy elections.  Walker's involvement was shown in an email to Karl Rove, bragging about how people like R.J. Johnson, who was Walker's campaign aide and a top official with the Wisconsin Club for Growth, was coordinating these acts of collusion.

Now, more documents are being considered for release.  Unfortunately, the person making that decision is Randa, who is beholden to the same Dark Money groups and to Walker.  He has recently given the parties involved an extension to the deadline for deciding which documents could be released:
The same day the documents were released, Randa ordered all the parties in the lawsuit to review the rest of the case filings and report back to him by July 3 on what more should be unsealed.

The parties filed a joint motion with Randa on Tuesday asking to push the report back to July 17. They say the sealed record contains more than 3,000 documents and the parties will need to compare notes, which will mean circulating a draft report among all the attorneys and conference calls all wrapped around the Fourth of July weekend.

Randa granted the motion Wednesday afternoon.
It should not be surprising if more delays are granted, at least until the Dark Money groups can help Randa find the rationale to support whatever they want him to do.

Meanwhile, prosecutors have asked the federal appellate court to allow the investigation to resume.  But don't look for a timely ruling on that:
The prosecutors have asked the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals to allow them to restart the investigation. That court issued a briefing schedule Wednesday with final filings due by Oct. 2, a little more than a month before the election.
Even if the prosecutors win that battle, I sincerely doubt that they would or could take action soon enough to have an impact on the November election.

The third arena that bears watching is in regards to the original Walkergate investigation which netted six convictions.  The Honorable Neil Nettesheim had ordered the documents and emails released back to the possession of Milwaukee County.

Unfortunately, it appears that I was correct in being concerned that Chris Abele would run interference for his friend Scott Walker by dilly-dallying with the release of those documents. Even though it's been more than six weeks since the documents were ordered to be released, Abele has not said a word about them.   Abele did say he wanted to have a private law firm vet the documents before he released them.  Any bets that the law firm is Foley & Lardner, the group that wrote the power grab bill or the law firm of Michael Best and Friedrich (I hear they come highly recommended by Walker)?

For someone that is supposedly supporting Mary Burke, one would think that Abele would have had those documents made available to the public as soon as humanly possible.  Then again, Abele has said a lot of things but has only shown that he isn't even as trustworthy as Walker, which says a lot.

You can contact Abele at 414-278-4211 or email him at CountyExec@milwaukeecountywi.gov to tell him to do his job and release the emails and other documents as he is required to do by law.

2 comments:

  1. Capper, thanks, great reporting.

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  2. I'd add another leg to your walkergate chair - the state lawsuits. As far as I know, there is one at the WISC, one which was rendered from the WISC (which is still sealed, as far as I know) and another at the appeals level. To the best of my knowledge, the appeals court hasn't yet ruled on what they are going to do about Peterson's stay of his own ruling...and it would appear that Randa's ruling may inhibit all the state courts from even acting.....not to mention the never before sealed decision from the WISC and the one not crazy justice recusing herself and another who may actually be under investigation....

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