Now Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel pretty much confirmed the news again, but then added a few twists.
One twist was that Walker found enough people, or one of his big donors, that agreed to allow $60,000 to be transferred to his legal cooperation fund.
That's not too surprising. Not only is he trying to keep himself out of prison, but he is reportedly paying to keep one of his top county staff/campaigners, Kelly Rindfleisch, free as well. And her attorney, Franklyn Gimbel, and his appeals motions, don't come cheap either.
Another twist is that his campaign, which hired former US Attorney Steve Biskupic, has brought in more than $170,000 for the law firm he works for, Michael Best & Friedrich. Walker's campaign is claiming that the bulk of it went to fight the recall, which so far consisted of getting the taxpayers, as opposed to his campaign, to fund the challenge of signatures.
That leaves about $52,000 left which the campaign labels as going for "compliance issues." That's a whole lotta complying going on.
But take note of the tone that his spokeswoman, Ciara Matthews, takes when questioned:
Walker campaign spokeswoman Ciara Matthews declined Tuesday to identify the governor's donors who authorized using their money in this way.Apparently, the media savvy spokeswoman isn't so savvy after all. Otherwise, she's have realized that obfuscating to the media is only going to make them dig deeper and find the things that Team Walker doesn't want us to know.
"Governor Walker’s disclosures have been made in accordance with, and as required by, the law," she said.
[...]
Matthews declined Tuesday to be more specific about the recent payments to Biskupic's firm.
"Again, as I have told you before, the campaign contracts with Michael Best & Friedrich for legal services to handle various compliance issues on our behalf," Matthews said.
If one takes the defensive song and dance from Team Walker, the increasing shrillness of squawkers like Charlie Sykes and the propagandists, one could start believing that we may get to see something for the Guinness Book of World Records.
The listing would be the most expensive pair of handcuffs:
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I note that in another JS story today, Ciara "Hooters" Mathews stated this:
ReplyDelete"Governor Walker has been told that he is not a target of this investigation."
I think that she is misstating his statement. As I recall, he said that he has not been told that he is a target of the investigation. And there is a major difference in that wording.
Capper, you have the encyclopedic memory on this. Which is it? Did she do a boo-boo?
Yup, she boo-booed bad.
DeleteI haven't seen any research by Bice or any of the blogs, but you'd think it would be easy to do a bit of research on these law firms and figure out how much they bill per hour for large cases encompassing at least two primary lawyers (one criminal, one defense), what the retainers are, and what fees may be associated. This kind of information would allow for a pretty good guesstimate on how many total law hours have been spent on Walker's defense. I think that would be a pretty valuable insight (i.e. "Gov. Walker, why have you had two criminal lawyers spend a combined 2500 hours working on just your defense?)
ReplyDeleteI mean, it sounds like he's spent in the neighborhood of 250k on lawyers. At 100$/hour, that's 2500 hours. At 200$/hour, that's 1250 hours.
I guesstimated them at about $400 to $500 per hour each. And that may be lowballing it.
Delete1) If Walker is paying his guys 400-500/hr and he's racked up 250k in bills, and still hasn't been charged, that reflects very poorly on Mr. Russell. He's been charged and has his lawyers literally fighting over a grand total of $5000.
ReplyDelete2) I guess it's true. Freedom isn't free. It costs 400-500$/hr.
3) What on Earth do you suppose those lawyers are doing for Walker? Russell and Rindfleisch didn't have lawyers pre-lawyering their charges. I guess they could be doing exactly what the blogs are doing and cataloging the info and building a defense. But can they really do anything to hold up the case before the charges are filed?
I'm not sure where you're going with any of those comments.
DeleteRussell is in deep and there's not really much he can do short of plea bargain.
Walker's not buying freedom, he's only delaying the inevitable.
Walker is also paying for Rindfelisch's attorney. And they are looking at the info against Walker and trying to figure out the likely charges and if there was a way out them.