Walkergate: Gimbel's Gag Lines

Now that Kelly Rindfleisch took her plea bargain, even though she failed to keep her end of the deal as soon as she took it, her lawyer has been doing his job of trying to spin her felony conviction and prep the way for his inevitable appeal.

Either that or he was trying out some new lines for his stand up comedy routine.

First, he tried to explain why he had subpoenaed Scott Walker:

Rindfleisch pleaded guilty Thursday to a single felony county of misconduct in office for doing campaign work while at her taxpayer-supported county job. Walker had been subpoenaed by Gimbel to testify, had the case gone to trial.

"I expected Gov. Walker would testify that Kelly Rindfleisch never disappointed him in terms of his expectations of what she did as either his policy analyst job that she held there or as the deputy chief of staff," Gimbel told WUWM-FM.

"She was always responsive to any request for services and she performed her services very well and in an efficient, competent manner," he said.

He said she was able to fulfill all her official county duties despite time spent helping Brett Davis' Republican campaign for lieutenant governor.

Of course Walker wasn't disappointed with her job performance in her county jobs. He didn't expect her to actually do them since she was so busy doing the campaigning and fund raising for Brett Davis and himself.

I clearly remember how the County Board was taken aback when she first appeared before them, some six months after her promotion to Walker's Deputy Chief of Staff. And Walker's Chief of Staff, Tom Nardelli, had to scramble to even find a brief blurb of a bio to explain to the Supervisors who she even was. That's not exactly a sign of someone fulfilling her job duties.

Gimbel then goes into a bit about his plan to appeal Rindfleisch's conviction based on not being able to use the universal immunity defense:

Her 2002 immunity deal was a point of contention with Circuit Judge David Hansher at the plea hearing. Hansher said Rindfleisch's old immunity deal could not be the basis for an appeal, contradicting her lawyer Franklyn Gimbel's belief that it could.

"The judge and I don't agree" that Rindfleisch's guilty plea precludes her from renewing her claim that her grant of immunity for her testimony in the caucus scandal extended to her conduct in 2010, Gimbel said in an interview. Hansher also rejected that when Gimbel raised it as a pretrial motion aimed at getting the charges against Rindfleisch dismissed.

Hansher also said he was surprised to see Gimbel bring up the immunity issue as a permissible basis of appealing a voluntary guilty plea when he read it in a Journal Sentinel article on the case that broke on JSOnline late Wednesday. The judge said he consulted with several other judges on the point and they agreed with his interpretation.

"It's the court's view that (appeal) right would be extinguished" by her guilty plea, Hansher said in court Thursday.

"We're not here to discuss the merits of any appeal here with you, your honor," Gimbel told the judge.

So, the immunity she was given for a crime ten years ago in Madison should be able to be applied to a crime she committed in current time in Milwaukee, per Gimbel.

You know, sometimes you come across things that are so out there that you can't even ridicule them. This would be the textbook example of that.

Finally, Gimbel tries to play the sympathy card for his client:

Gimbel said Rindfleisch had been ostracized by longtime friends, many working in state government, because of this year's criminal case.

"She's had extraordinary stresses and pain as a result of these charges," Gimbel said. "She's feeling very relieved that this is almost behind her."

It's not surprising that she is shunned. Politics is all about image and the people currently working for the government wouldn't want to be associated with her for fear of guilt by association.

But I also find it hard to be sympathetic to someone who broke the law and helped Scott Walker cheat his way into office only to have him cause extraordinary stresses and pain on millions of Wisconsinites with his maleficent agenda. In fact, when I think of all the people she helped hurt by her misdeeds, I don't think she will be paying nearly enough for her crimes.

Walkergate: Rindfleisch To Fall On Her Own Secret Router

We learned at the end of last week that the prosecutors had filed their final pretrial papers in preparation for the jury trial of Kelly Rindfleisch, who has been charged with four counts of illegally doing campaign work while working in her Milwaukee County office as Scott Walker's Assistant Chief of Staff.

Among the papers filed was the potential witness list. And heading that list was none other than John Doe Scott Walker himself.

Monday was the final pretrial hearing for Rindfleisch.

As one might have expected, the Honorable David Hansher is tired of all the stalling and game playing by Rindfleisch and her attorney, Franklyn Gimbel, and denied the defense's umpteenth request to stay the hearing pending yet another appeal.

Gimbel also asked, via a Motion In Limine, to have the Court suppress Rindfleisch's statements that she had made to the caucus scandal investigators regarding her knowledge of it being illegal to campaign while at work as a public employee. In other words, she wants to claim that she didn't know it was wrong to do this, despite being granted immunity for doing illegal campaigning during the caucus scandals.

I don't think the judge will grant this wish either, but even if he does, it won't help her case at all. First of all, there is the fact that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Secondly, the Milwaukee County Ethics Board sends out regular reminders of ethics rules and conflicts of interest. So even if the defense argues she didn't know it then, they cannot argue that they didn't know it during her time as Walker's henchwoman.

The judge is expected to make his ruling on October 11, the same day that they are to do the deposition of the mysterious and still unidentified "Timothy L."

But, as you might expect, when it comes to anything related to Walker - say it with me - there is more. There is always more.

Steve Schultze of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that Gimbel said that the DA's Office tried to get Rindfleisch to cooperate with their investigation, which she refused. Read this excerpt of the article carefully (emphasis mine):

A former top aide to Gov. Scott Walker resisted prosecutors' efforts to get her to implicate others in a longstanding John Doe investigation, the aide's attorney said Monday.

Prosecutors sought cooperation from Kelly Rindfleisch, who worked as Walker's deputy chief of staff in 2010 when Walker was still Milwaukee County executive, said Franklyn Gimbel, Rindfleisch's lawyer.

"They tried to get her to turn on somebody in authority, but she declined," Gimbel said in an interview. "They were looking for information on people up the food chain," Gimbel said.

He declined to name them.

Now, there weren't many people above Rindfleisch.

On the Milwaukee County side, there was the Chief of Staff, Tom Nardelli, who so far doesn't seem to have anything concrete to do with Walkergate. And above him was Scott Walker. That's it.

On the campaign side, there were more names, including Brett Davis, whom Rindfleisch was working for as a fund raiser. There was also Cullen Werwie, who was Davis' campaign manager but has also been given immunity. Then there was also Keith Gilkes, Walker's campaign manager and Walker again.

But of greater interest is WHY would Rindfleisch decide to fall on her own secret router rather than save her own butt.

There's only a few reasons that would make sense:

• She really doesn't think she did anything wrong. The problem with this is that she was already tied up in the caucus scandal and does know better, unless she is so psychotic she just can't differentiate wrong from right.
• She is expecting to be pardoned or have her sentence commuted. All I can say to that is if that would happen, the reaction across the state would make the protests from 2011 look like a family picnic.
• She's being paid off. It might make it easier for her to take her punishment if she knows that there's a big bundle of cash and/or a high paying job waiting for her when she gets out of prison. Of course, it would be her mistake to trust any of them, but that's her problem.
• She's such a zealot that she would gladly sacrifice her freedom in the name of "the cause" or for Dear Leader Walker.

That last possibility is truly a frightening prospect. How full of hate are these people that they would give up their lives just to get more money and/or power, even if it would destroy the lives of the working people of state? And people wonder why I refer to them as teahadists.

Justice cannot come quickly enough to the lot of them, especially to the "people up the food chain." It's truly a matter of public safety and for the common good.

Walkergate: Watch Out For Runaround Rindfleisch

During the course of the criminal case against Kelly Rindfleisch, her attorney, Franklyn Gimbel, has tried everything and anything to get her off the hook. The only thing he hasn't tried yet is argue her innocence.

When his legal maneuverings in circuit court didn't work, he started filing appeals.

The first appeal was that the case should be heard in Columbia County, even though the alleged crimes happened in Milwaukee County and Rindfleisch signed employment papers stating that she was a Milwaukee County citizen.

This appeal was summarily denied.

Undaunted, Rindfleisch then filed a second appeal, trying to claim universal immunity, arguing that the immunity she received a decade ago on the first caucus scandals applied across space and time and covered all past and future crimes she might have committed.

Guess what?

There are apparently limitations to immunity after all and the court also denied this one immediately.

But it's not time to dig into the popcorn just yet.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Gimbel is gearing up for a third crack at the appellate court:

Gimbel said he plans to appeal another ruling by Hansher denying an attempt to suppress evidence collected under a search warrant from Rindfleisch's home last year. Gimbel said prosecutors' collection of emails from two of Rindfleisch's personal accounts for a two-year period amounted to a fishing expedition.

Yeah, never mind that the prosecutors already had a ton of evidence from her county office in then County Executive Scott Walker's suite, including the secret router, to take her to trial. If they were fishing, it was in a barrel stocked with them.

Obviously, this is nothing more than a stalling technique by Gimbel.

A faithful reader had opined that Gimbel is simply acting like any good lawyer and doing whatever he can to keep his client out of prison for as long as he possibly can. And I'm sure there is a certain amount of merit to this train of thought.

But I think of this and wonder if Gimbel might not be thinking of other considerations as he tries to stall the case:

I've questioned before just how Rindfleisch is able to afford a high caliber, high cost attorney like Franklyn Gimbel. I've heard Walker has his people, including campaign manager Keith Gilke doing some fundraising on the side for Kelly.

But could there be other things at play?

Gimbel is the chairman of the Wisconsin Center District board. His appointment expired three months ago. One would think that Scott Walker would want to put his own people in there immediately, as he is wont to do everywhere else. Or are there other considerations at play here?

One thing we know is that Rindfleisch probably isn't paying for Gimbel's legal services on her own. She's not very good at doing an honest day's work.

For those not aware, the Wisconsin Center District includes some of the top venues in downtown Milwaukee, including the ailing BMO Bradley Center, home of the Milwaukee Bucks. The district board has been hinting at seeking a sales tax to pay for building a new arena for the Bucks to play in. Wouldn't a nice way to get the anti-tax Scott Walker to have a change of heart be to delay any legal proceedings that he might not want to go forward?

And then there is also the nagging question of who the hell is paying for Gimbel's services?

Walkergate: Motion In Limine

Things are still moving below the radar of the mainstream media, but they sure do pique one's curiosity.

I mentioned last week that there is a motion for a deposition of one "Tim L." We still don't know who this person is, but the tips coming in are most intriguing.

On Monday, there was more action which is just as curious.

First, the Court has moved the pretrial date back from September 14 to September 24 due to a scheduling conflict the Court had.

But the really thought-provoking entry is this:

Notice of Motion and State's First Motion In Limine - Business Record Certificates, filed.

First, we need to know what a "Motion in Limine" is. And teh Google is full of entries on this.

According to Law.com, a Motion In Limine is defined as such:

(lim-in-nay) n. Latin for "threshold," a motion made at the start of a trial requesting that the judge rule that certain evidence may not be introduced in trial. This is most common in criminal trials where evidence is subject to constitutional limitations, such as statements made without the Miranda warnings (reading the suspect his/her rights).

Wikipedia (yeah, I know) offers a more plain language explanation:

Motion in limine (Latin: "at the start") is a legal written "request" or motion to a judge which can be used for civil or criminal proceedings and at the State or Federal level. A frequent use is at a pre-trial hearing or during an actual trial requesting that the judge rule that certain testimony regarding evidence or information may be included or excluded from the trial. The motion is always discussed outside the presence of the jury and always decided by a judge. The reasons for the motions are wide and varied, but probably the most frequent use of the motion in limine in a criminal trial is to shield the jury from information concerning the defendant which could possibly be unfairly prejudicial to him if heard at trial.[1] Some others arise under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for failure to comply with discovery.[2][3][4]

A motion in limine is used to get a ruling to allow for the inclusion of evidence, not only to get a ruling as to whether or not evidence will be precluded from trial.

Such a motion or order is said to be "in limine", which one commentary states is Latin for "at the outset" They are made "preliminary", and it is presented for consideration of the judge (or arbitrator or hearing officer) to be decided without before the merits are reached.[5]:791

But there is this line as well:

A party proffering certain evidence can also ask for the admission of certain information or evidence via a motion in limine. This tactic can be especially useful if the admissibility of certain evidence critical to that opposing party's case is in doubt.

This is interesting considering that Rindfleisch's attorney, Frank Gimbel, is no slouch and has thrown just about everything but the kitchen sink at the case in, thus far, futile efforts to derail the case.

But it could also be a preemptive move to keep Gimbel from using the egregious propaganda from the right wing "news services" from being a factor and having to waste time and leverage by having them throw in their aspersions about the DA's office and the investigation itself.

Or it could be something entirely different.

But since we have two weeks, at least, before we find out, it sure is fun to speculate on all the possibilities.

Walkergate: Looking Up Some Old Friends

Here's a couple of things to keep the appetite for all things Walkergate whetted:

Well, Hello Kelly, Part II

Remember how Kelly Rindfleisch and her attorney, Frank Gimbel, kept trying to argue that she had universal immunity which protected her through all time and space?  As I had predicted, they were denied.

Undaunted, they tried again, this time using the Kastiger maneuver. (Kastiger is Universal Immunity in legalese, or something like that.)

The Honorable David Hansher said that he'd have his decision last Friday. He was a few days late with it, but that's OK.

The ruling was still MOTION DENIED.

Is Russell A Marked Man?

On Monday, we learned the identity of Tim Russell's fifth attorney. He's a young lawyer named Parker Mathers.

However, we knew precious little about him other than he graduated from Marquette University in 2010.

Then a savvy reader picked up on his name being affiliated with some events on Barack Obama's event page.

Tuesday afternoon, Dan Bice confirmed that Mathers had been a former field operative for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. From what I have learned on my own, he was involved in GOTV kind of work.

The remarkable thing is that out of Russell's five attorneys, all but one has been Democrats or have Democratic leanings. The only one who was Republican was Dennis Krueger, his last one before Mathers, who got kicked off the case when it was revealed that he secretly had taken a job as a state prosecutor in Fond du Lac County.

It gives one pause to wonder if Russell is deliberately picking Democratic attorneys. It could be that he is angling to get a plea bargain and figures that a Democratic attorney might be able to get him a better deal. Or it could be that he is concerned that Walker would find out what his intentions are and try to interfere in some way.

Then again, it could be that Walker put out the word to Republican lawyers to stay clear of Russell although that seems rather counter intuitive. I'd think Walker would be trying to get an inside scoop to what's happening so that his handlers could get a step on their spin and possibly set Russell up to the be the patsy.

A third possibility would be that the Republican attorneys are purposely avoiding the case so they don't get taken down with this lot of unethical weasels.

Speaking of Dennis Krueger

When it came to light that Krueger had taken a job as a state prosecutor in Fond du Lac County, Judge Hansher was fit to be tied and told Kreuger that he was considering filing a complaint against him.

Now Krueger has a second high profile case in a mess and another judge mad as hell at him:

Wasserman called Krueger "a mole" working for the state among the defense. The defense strategy was not only acquired by the state via Krueger, the motion read, "it was formulated by the state through and by Krueger."

At a hearing July 23, Krueger withdrew from the Cullen case, but not before he took heat from Circuit Judge David Borowski. who said he was considering a complaint to the Office of Lawyer Regulation. When he asked Krueger how he thought he could apply for a prosecutor's job and accept it while actively representing Cullen in plea negotiations, Krueger had no answer.

"To say 'I don't have an explanation' is not acceptable," Borowski said. He told Krueger, "You and your office in Fond du Lac have some explaining to do."

He gave the state two weeks to respond to Wasserman's motion.

And While We're Talking About Laywers

I've questioned before just how Rindfleisch is able to afford a high caliber, high cost attorney like Franklyn Gimbel. I've heard Walker has his people, including campaign manager Keith Gilke doing some fundraising on the side for Kelly.

But could there be other things at play?

Gimbel is the chairman of the Wisconsin Center District board. His appointment expired three months ago. One would think that Scott Walker would want to put his own people in there immediately, as he is wont to do everywhere else. Or are there other considerations at play here?

One thing we know is that Rindfleisch probably isn't paying for Gimbel's legal services on her own. She's not very good at doing an honest day's work.

Collateral Damage

There's been a couple of stories that resulted in the fallout of Walkergate that should be addressed. This is as just as good a place and time as any.

When Tim Russell was arrested and charged, it was mentioned in the criminal complaint against him that another higher ranking county official, Jim Tietjen, was part of Russell's phony group which was allegedly handling the funds for Operation Freedom.

Tietjen denied any knowledge of being on the board of this group and the issue was dropped. Or so we thought.

The DA's office apparently found stuff. Although the powers that be deemed it not to be enough for prosecution, it was an offense worth getting fired over, and maybe costing him his pension:

It's a violation of county ethics rules for officials to take money or gifts from someone seeking county business. Email and video evidence showed Tietjen's landscape employees were doing work for two county vendors, according to the memo, written by Hector Colon, who heads the county's Department of Health and Human Services.

Tietjen said that work wasn't a payback for a county contract. He said he has nothing to do with county procurement.

"I put nothing in my pocket," he said.

Deputy District Attorney Kent Lovern declined to comment Monday on whether prosecutors were investigating Tietjen. County Auditor Jerome Heer said he couldn't comment on a review of a personnel matter.

Numerous emails sent over the past year and uncovered by county officials found that Tietjen was doing work on his landscaping business during his county workday. Tietjen admitted doing so when he was confronted, according to the memo by Colon, who is Tietjen's boss.

Tietjen also had his work email forwarded to his county email account, "thus allowing him to do his personal business during county time," Colon's memo says.

Tietjen said his son had his Duke's Landscaping email forwarded to his county account. The elder Tietjen said he didn't know how to change it back. Besides, he's put in many extra hours for the county that would far offset any time spent reading email for his landscaping business, he said.

Tietjen also was fired for ordering a subordinate to solicit money from county vendors for "Operation Freedom," an annual picnic for veterans at the Milwaukee County Zoo hosted by Gov. Scott Walker while he was county executive, according to the Colon memo.

Tietjen acknowledged he had done that but said it was six or more years ago when Walker was county executive. Tietjen said no pressure was put on any county vendor to donate to the veterans' event.

Tietjen's "numerous violations" of county rules "warrant immediate termination," Colon wrote in the memo Friday - the day Tietjen was terminated.

What's not been reported anywhere else is that as soon as this story hit the newsstands, one of his top subordinates retired immediately. Another subordinate quit for unknown reasons, but speculation is that it was somehow tied to Tietjen's firing.

More recently, another Walker appointee, Freida Webb, just got suspended from her job and is accused of embezzling money meant to go to minority-owned vendors.

However there is another story regarding how Milwaukee County has to pay back the feds for improperly used HUD funding which should shoot of alarms for even the most obtuse person:

Two of the improper allocations went to the county's Community Development Business Partners, whose director Freida Webb was arrested and briefly jailed July 19. The county's repayment included nearly $28,000 directed to Webb's program and $18,400 the county gave to the Milwaukee Urban League for work on the same program.

Webb helped create a phony contract for classes to help aspiring minority and female contractors get certified for the county's disadvantaged business contracting program, according to court records. She also participated in a double-billing scheme involving a local contractor and took kickbacks totaling $3,430 from the contractor, according to an affidavit by an investigator for the district attorney's office. Webb was suspended without pay from her $82,000 a year job pending the outcome of an ongoing criminal investigation.

[...]

County Executive Chris Abele said his administration pursued reforms after it was made aware of HUD concerns late last year.

"Due to a lack of administrative oversight of the CDBG program by prior administrations, several ineligible projects were approved and funded in previous years," Abele said in a statement. A more objective process for reviewing and approving applicants for block grant aid was put in place, he said.

The county's list of 2011 projects for HUD funding was developed in 2010 by Timothy Russell, who was then the county housing director. Russell faces unrelated felony embezzlement charges in Circuit Court.

I had heard rumors a long long time ago that Russell might have been inappropriately diverting HUD funding for illegal purposes, but couldn't find anything to verify that. It just might be time to make another look into that.

Heh. I guess there was more than what I had originally thought. I should've known. A wise man once said that with all things Walker, there's more. There's always more.

Walkergate: The Return Of The Universal Immunity Defense

The other day, I pointed out that there were upcoming attractions in regards to the criminal case against Kelly Rindfleisch.

Indeed, there's been a relative flurry of action going on in the case. As noted in the above link,the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office is seeking permission to introduce even more of Rindfleisch's emails to provide "necessary context" and "complete the story behind the workday contacts in the charged counts."

Meanwhile, Rindfleisch's attorney, Franklyn Gimbel, has again filed a motion to have the case dismissed. His motion is based on two things.

One, he is citing the theory of universal immunity, in that the immunity Rindfleisch was granted during the caucus scandals should transcend time and be inclusive for all criminal behaviors.  He's tried this before, and I didn't think much of it then:

The defense with the highest comical effect, although I'm sure it was not intentional, is the one that Rindfleisch's attorney is presenting.

The first attempt to was to try to get the case dismissed outright, stating that it was improper for the complaint to include testimony that Rindfleisch had given years ago during the caucus trials.  In other words, they were trying to argue that the immunity granted all that time ago was unlimited in time and scope - an universal immunity, if you will.

While I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on the Internet, I find this laughable. The immunity that was granted was indeed to protect her from incriminating herself...for the caucus scandals. It was not meant to cover her for any other misdeeds she might do years later. 

The answer to this was already given in the DA's response to Tim Russell's motion to suppress evidence. Russell's attorney, Dennis Krueger, argued that the Walkergate investigation exceeded it's authority in its scope.  However, ADA Bruce Landgraf pointed out that the investigation followed the crime and that the investigation was under the auspices of an overseeing judge, in this case, the Honorable Neal P. Nettesheim.

Starting on the bottom of page 2 of the state's response:

The John Doe proceeding at issue here was commenced in May 2010. It was initiated pursuant to Wisconsin Statutes §968.26 (2009) That statute provides in relevant part:

(1) If a district attorney requests a judge to convene a proceeding to determine whether a crime has been committed in the court's jurisdiction, the judge shall convene a proceeding described under sub.(3)and shall subpoena and examine any witnesses the district attorney identifies.

***

(3) The extent to which the judge might proceed in an examination under sub.(1) or (2)is within the judge's discretion. The examination may be adjourned and may be secret...

The same would hold true for material evidence as well.

In other words, as long as the judge finds the request permissible, it will be allowed to happen. The only way that the DA would be able to ensure gathering all of the evidence is to collect all the emails for a specific time frame and then go through it.

A strong example would be from the Rindfleisch transcripts filed earlier this year. The email servers might not have thought a discussion of who was taking care of Rindfleisch's pets would be relevant to the case, but the DA's Office was able to use that to show that she was committing fraud by using the pretense of moving to Milwaukee County so that Walker could hire her to work in his office and do the campaign work he wanted her to do.

If I can see through Gimbel's arguments and rebut them, I'm sure that ADA Landgraf or whoever is handling this case will be able to do so with even more aplomb.

In summary, I don't think that Gimbel's gambit will work anymore than his failed attempt to have the venue changed to Columbia County.  But he is doing what he is supposed in offering the best defense he can for her.  It's not his fault that Rindfleisch was so blatant in her misdeeds that there is such a pile of evidence against her.

Walkergate: What's In His Wallet?

There's been something nagging at me for a while now, and really piqued my curiosity with the post I wrote last night: Just how are some of the Walkergate defendants paying for things?

Kelly Rindfleisch has retained the services of Franklyn Gimbel, who is a high profile attorney who assuredly doesn't come cheap. Yet in 2010, Rindfleisch had only made $47,873 from Milwaukee County and few thousand from the campaign work. Unless her consulting business really took off with exceptional success, Gimbel must be pretty hard to afford.

Even more curious is Tim Russell's case.

Russell was fired from Milwaukee County at the end of 2010, and as far as anyone has reported, he was not working since then. He does have his realty business, but one would have to wonder how successful a year he had with sales bouncing all over and when a sale did happen, it was usually at a much lower cost. As a sign of what looked like he might be having financial difficulties, he allowed his Milwaukee home to be foreclosed on:

But what is a bit odd about this article is that, towards the bottom as they give an abbreviated recounting of recent events, they include this non sequitur:

Authorities took Wink's work computer and executed a search warrant on her home. They also took a work computer from Tim Russell, a longtime Walker ally who was county housing director.

Russell recently lost his west side house to foreclosure.

He had taken out a mortgage for $184,000 with a 9.7% interest rate in 2003 for his house on N. 49th St. He was sued by his bank in July 2010 for defaulting on the loan.

At first, Russell mounted an aggressive defense. But he reversed course earlier this year, agreeing to give up the house. Last month, a Milwaukee County judge entered a judgment against Russell. The house is expected to be sold at a sheriff's sale soon.
I'm not sure what that has to do with the rest of the article, unless they are trying to infer he lost the home because of legal costs. But even that wouldn't make much sense, since Russell was already living in Sun Prairie long before any of that happened.

What would be interesting to know is why a person with an apparently successful business in Milwaukee would move to a place more than an hour away from said business. This is especially true when one considers gas prices and that he apparently was having money problems from legal costs and/or losing his job with the county after Walker left him high and dry.

It sure looks like he might be having money problems, doesn't it?

Yet Russell has retained the services of not just one, but two, attorneys. One of course is the award winning Michael Maistelman, one of the best lawyers in the state, who doesn't come cheap either. But besides Maistelman, Russell also has retained attorney Andrew Franklin. I can't say I know anything about Attorney Franklin, but it would not be a large leap of logic to say that Russell is spending up to $500 an hour for these to gentlemen to defend him.

So where is he getting that kind of cash?