The Good, The Bad And The Truly Incredulous

Last night, I wrote about the facts revealed by two motions filed by Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf in regards to motions to dismiss and suppress charges against Tim Russell.

Today, the rest of the world caught up to the gentle reader and made their reports, with mixed results.

Marie Rohde, writing for WisPolitics.com, did a very able job in her report and covered all the basis. This is what a news article should look like.

Steve Schultze at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel didn't do nearly as well as Rohde with his original minimalist article.  He then beefed it up and made it better, probably due to Aunt Bee showing him up by linking to my post, but failed to do a lot of follow through questions regarding Sykes' knowledge of the source of the information.

Furthermore, there is this:

In another disclosure in Landgraf's court filing, a copy of a letter to Russell's lawyer is included that says Milwaukee County Supervisor Joe Sanfelippo gave a statement to prosecutors. Russell had sought that and numerous other documents from prosecutors to help prepare his defense. 

Sanfelippo said Tuesday that he was an Operation Freedom board member and that he had volunteered serving food at the event.

What Schultze doesn't report, and maybe isn't even aware of, is that Kelly Rindfleisch had been observed in Sanfelippo's office a number of times, discussing campaign issues and other political topics.  This is, of course, a very distinct no-no.  It is illegal to do political work in a government office.

Then there is Rick Esenberg, who takes money from the Bradley Foundation and works hand in hand with Citizens for a Responsible Government, and yet considers himself to be a credible resource. He takes his leave of absence from reality with this:

This would make him a recipient of a leak - not its source.  There is no evidence that that he was under any legal obligation not to pass it along. Who the initial source was - and whether there was a leak that violated a secrecy order - remains unknown. And that is the more critical question.
Nor does the e-mail establish that Sykes was being “hypocritical” for complaining of leaks from the Doe. To the contrary, it substantiated his complaints, even as it did not reveal the original source.
The September 26, 2010 e-mail from John HIller to then County Executive Walker is no more illuminating. Apparently Hiller found out that Dan Bice was writing a story, talked with him about the story and reported on the conversation to Walker. In the course of the e-mail, Hiller says that Bice told him that he got "much" of his "information" from one of Darlene Wink's attorneys who send him an e-mail defending her. But what that "information" was and whether revealing it would have violated a secrecy order is not revealed. (Indeed, if the lawyer had breached secrecy, he would have almost certainly asked Bice for confidentiality which he obviously did not. If he had, Bice would hardly have identified him to Hiller.)

I don't even know where to go with this. You can't argue against insanity.  Not only does Esenberg fabricate things, he totally misconstrues what is there and tries to make it fit into his own skewed sense of reality.  Then again, I have already pointed out that people have a hard time dealing with reality when it conflicts with their own ill-formed perceptions.  Esenberg has thrown full in with Walker and cannot accept the fact yet that he was wrong.

But I eagerly await Esenberg's essay on how photos of the Earth show that it's flat.

Walkergate: A New Wink-le In The Story

Darlene Wink, who worked for Scott Walker when he was Milwaukee County Executive and was the first name to come out in what appears to the scandal of the century, made it in the news again today.

Wink was first brought to the attention of the public when she was busted leaving comments on JSOnline and other blogs promoting Walker's gubernatorial candidacy and ripping at his opponents.  Little did we know at the time that this was just the very tip of the tip of a huge iceberg of corruption and scandal.

It was only after that news came out that it raised suspicions about other things.

One such thing was an incident in which I, acting as the Chair of Milwaukee County First, asked about a Milwaukee County Parks logo being on a banner announcing a Tea Party rally held at the lakefront.  Stemming from this, Cory Liebmann was able to figure out that it was Wink who not only handled my request but also a suspicious Open Records Request within minutes, leading to suspicions that Wink and other county staffers were behind the official unofficial Walker campaign site, ScottForGov.com.

It was also suspicious that when Walker sent an email, from his campaign website regarding Wink getting busted and demanding that there should be "no laptops, no websites, no time away during the workday, etc.," the site disappeared into thin air.

Wink then came up again when she was found to be tied in to "Operation Freedom," the political stunt posing as a charitable event, from which Tim Russell was embezzling  thousands of dollars.  Despite warnings from the Ethics Board, Walker had Russell and Wink running this thing from his executive office.

Then finally, a couple of weeks ago, almost as an afterthought, Wink was arrested and charged with two counts of illegally campaigning and fundraising.  Much about her arrest was drowned out as people were trying to come to terms with the level of corruption happening with Kelly Rindfleisch.

The Milwaukee County District Attorney offered a plea bargain to Wink.  The deal was that they would drop the charges from felonies to misdemeanors and not recommend any jail time.  In return, Wink was to plead guilty and act as state witness against the others that have been charged and to give information about the "destruction of digital evidence."

Photo illustration by
Anna Ironside

It could very well have been Wink who told investigators where to go in which underground parking area to find the Mystery Dumpster'O'Fun.

News of the deal has many Wisconsinites excited and hopeful that this means she'll spill her guts and give enough information for them to indict Walker.

I wouldn't be too sure about that.  While it's obviously true that, like most people, she really, really doesn't want to go to jail, but how strong is that aversion to incarceration?

I have spoken to people who have known her and they have described her as being very zealous, almost to the point of being cultish, to all things Walker.  In other words, she has drunken long and deep and often of the Kool-Aid and that they could see her taking a fall if it meant protecting her Dear Leader.

I was reminded of this when I saw this quote in the report by Marie Rohde, writing for WisPolitics.com:

“Miss Wink just wants to put this behind her,” Wolff said. “She doesn’t like being in the limelight, and she’s a very loyal person.” 

The question is whether she is more loyal to herself or to Walker.  Of course, they could also be using her to put the pressure on others in an effort to get them to turn on Walker.

But then again, there is this blurb from Dan Bice's report for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Wolff said Wink was able to complete all her legitimate county assignments in her courthouse job, as well as the campaign work done at the request of someone else. Wolff declined to identify that person. Wink was not pressured to do the campaign work, Wolff said.

One could easily assume that it is Walker who asked her to do that work.  My guess is that it wasn't Walker, but that it was Tim Russell.

If my guess is correct, the question becomes who told Russell to have it done.

That person could be very well the same person who told Russell that there should be "no laptops, no websites, no time away during the workday, etc.," and then violated that same directive within days himself.

While Wink turning state witness might not necessarily be the direct downfall of Scott Walker, it could very well be the beginning of the end.