Walkergate: Son of the Caucus Scandals

For the regular followers of the ongoing Walkergate saga, they already know that it is a vast and ever expanding web of deceit, lies and all sorts of illegal activities.

It is so vast, that even I have problems keeping up with everything, much less finding time to put fingers to keyboards to share what I have learned.  But even in the complex pattern of this web of corruption, patterns can be found and strands can be tied together.

We already knew that Scott Walker had allowed the office of the Milwaukee County Executive to be the campaign headquarters for not only him, but for the person he wanted to be his Lieutenant Governor, Brett Davis.

But a further analysis of the criminal complaint filed against Kelly Rindfleisch, who served as Walker's Assistant Chief of Staff as well as Brett Davis' campaign fundraiser, show that as all things Walker, there is always more.

It seems that not only were the County Executive's office used for its formal business and for campaign activities, but it also served as a fundraising center for WISGOP.

On page 37 of the complaint is this clip of an email from Cullen Werwie, then Brett Davis' campaign staffer to Rindfleisch:

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This clip would seem to indicate that Rindfleisch was known primarily as a campaign fundraiser.  The fact that she was also a government worker seems to be a distant second, if thought about at all.  This is supported by the fact that Werwie was asking Rindfleisch for help in amassing a large fundraising spreadsheet which could be shared between the campaigns.

The second clip is from page 45 and is an exchange between Jim Villa and Rindfleisch.  Villa was a former Chief of Staff for Walker and worked on his campaign to some degree:

This exchange shows Rindfleisch was working as a fundraiser for Walker and Davis at the same time, instead of serving the public, like she was getting paid to do.

Also please note two of the names mentioned in this exchange: John Hiller and Ed Aprahamian.

Hiller was the long-standing campaign treasure for Scott Walker until they separated ways about a year ago.  Walker would have us believe that he fired Hiller because he didn't think Hiller was up to the job of handling all of the donations coming in.  This sudden realization came after Hiller worked for Walker for 18 years.

Aprahamian is also a familiar name to me.  He is the owner of MidAmerican Building Services.  At the end of 2009, Walker granted Aprahamian a contract worth more than a million dollars to clean the Milwaukee County Courthouse as he laid off all of the county's housekeeping staff.  At the time, I pointed out that this appeared to be in violation of county ethics laws, as the timing of the donation coincided with the time he was proposing privatizing these services.

With the new information coming from the criminal complaint, I took a second look at Aprahamian's donations.  The Wisconsin Democracy's database shows the $1,000 that Aprahamian donated to Walker.  But it also shows that one year later, he donated another $1,000 to Brett Davis.

But I noticed something else odd about these donations.  For the donation for Davis, it lists Aprahamian''s employer as being MidAmerican Building Services.  However, for his donation to Walker, it shows his employer to be Gateway Services.

Gateway Services is another familiar name.  It is a name that was brought up as the company that is owned by Dan Morse and whose CEO is Phillip Prange.  They are big time fundraisers for Walker and have worked as campaign consultants for Walker.  This all came out when we took a look the skulduggery behind the propagandist group, Wisconsin Reporter.

The third clip I would point out comes from page 48 of the complaint:

There's Aprahamian's name again.

But the significance of this passage is that it shows that Rindfleisch was sharing donors between the campaign.  This is highly unusual.

Politicians treat key donors as a dog treats a bone.  They are very territorial and protective of their donors and the best ones are kept close.  Sharing these key donors are almost never heard of.  Rindfleisch is politically savvy enough to know that she wouldn't be in the business long, if she hadn't gotten Walker's blessing before doing this.

And the Jason Thompson mentioned in the clip is Tommy Thompson's son, who was Davis' campaign treasurer.

While most of the above items was already pretty much known, I would like to point this out lastly, again on page 48 is this:

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce you to one of the smoking guns.

Judi Rhodes, aka Judi Rhodes-Engels, is someone else we know.  She is the Harley Davidson-riding GOP operative that specializes in raising funds for State Senator Scott Fitzgerald.  Rhodes sent a spreadsheet named "All Contributions-cfis-xlsm" to Rindfleisch, on what would be normally considered a work day during normal work hours.

This means not only was Walker having county staff running his campaign and doing fundraising on county time, and not only were the same staff coordinating things with the Davis campaign, but also was coordinating with WISGOP staff, under the leadership of State Senator Scott Fitzgerald.  How was this arrangement approved and by whom?

In summary, you have a distinct pattern of Walker using his county staff and his county executive office which was doing campaign activity, most of which was a fund raising fundraising operation not just for himself, but also for his choice for Lieutenant Governor, Brett Davis.  On top of all that, they were coordinating across multiple facets of WISGOP, most notably (for now) State Senator Scott Fitzgerald.

Does anyone, honestly believe that Scott Walker, Brett Davis, Scott Fitzgerald and maybe even Reince Priebus, didn't know about any of this nor gave their blessings to it?

We'd best hurry and get to the kitchen.  I think we're going to need a lot more popcorn for this. A lot more.

Wisconsin Reporter? Try Walker Supporters

Wisconsin Reporter has been a thorn in the side of the people of Wisconsin for a long time now.  They claim to be an "independent news source," but the fact is that it would be a kindness to call them a political tabloid, but with a lower level of credibility.

I've already written about this mob of GOP activists pretending to be reporters and shown their connection to the Koch-funded Franklin Center for Public and Government Integrity.

The sorely missed Tom Foley also wrote about them a few times, including how they stole into a private meeting and purloined training documents.  Another classic is their very loose qualifications for what they consider reliable news sources.

And I was recently reminded of, they also took part in a scheme to try to discredit the future Senator Jessica King when she was running against the fake Democrat.

Their lack of journalistic ethics and integrity shown through again the other day.

When President Barack Obama came to Milwaukee to tout Master Lock for bringing back good jobs from China, the Wisconsin Reporter sent someone to the event.  While there, said reporter (and I use that term loosely) tried to get in the face of DPW Chairman Mike Tate and record a private, off-the-record conversation he was having.

Graeme Zielinski sent an email to WR to complain of their unprofessional behavior, and he got a very rude response from Matt Kittle, who not only disregarded Mr. Zielinski's concerns, but also made tasteless cracks about mental illness.

A Google search showed that Wisconsin Reporter isn't his only job. He's also enmeshed with a thing called iowapolitics.com The website's "About Section" sadly was not surprising:

IowaPolitics.com is a part of StatehouseNewsOnline.com, a collection of independent journalists and organizations covering state-specific and government activity.

StatehouseNewsOnline.com is the national leading news website dedicated to aggregating news from the nation’s state capitals. The news website networks with dozens of state-based news organizations to provide in depth coverage of state legislation, government & special interests, state budgets and political/campaign news.

StatehouseNewOnline.com was launched in September 2010, as a project of the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to promoting new media journalism and government transparency and accountability.

The Franklin Center serves as a capacity builder, providing trainings and networking opportunities and supporting a network of investigative journalists and statehouse reportersStateHouseOnline.com utilizes a state-specific approach, in order to provide readers with information that is of proximate and practical interest. Interested parties can contact info@FranklinCenterHQ.org for more information.

The Franklin Center is not responsible for the information that appears on this site. The organization serves as a capacity builder and networking agent for independent, state-based journalists and organizations.

I naturally went to StatehouseNewOnline.com and found that their self-description was almost identical to IowaPolitics.com and to Wisconsin Reporter. This makes sense since they are all bought and paid for by the same group.

So now we know that all these sites that Kittle is part of a larger cluster-family of Koch-funded groups aimed at promoting one their warped ideology.

But there's more. There's always more.

I called upon the research team at Politiscoop.com for some assistance in confirming who owned these sites. StatehouseNewOnline.com came back as registered to the Franklin Center of Government and Public Integrity, but the IowaPolitics.com site proved to be most interesting.

The domain is owned by Gateway Ventures. Gateway Ventures' had a vice-president by the name of Dan Morse, who is a big time supporter of Scott Walker. In fact, his LinkedIn profile shows that he's a fundraiser for Friends of Scott Walker as well as the CEO of Dan Morse Consulting. Clients of his consulting business include the campaigns for Scott Walker and Michael Huebsch.

Also very interesting is that the check on the domain showed that the administrator is Phillip Prange. Prange is the CEO of Gateway Ventures and the President and CEO of Wisconsin Business Council. This is significant since 77% of the members of this group donated to Republican politicians, including Scott Walker.

As a point of interest, it should also be noted that Prange is the brother-in-law to Nick Hurtgen, who has his own sordid history with Walker.

So now, thanks to Kittle's intemperance, we have learned that Wisconsin Reporter is just a small part of a larger right wing echo chamber, all of which is headed up by the Koch-funded Franklin Center for Public and Government Integrity.  On top of that, this echo chamber is tied in with and, at least partially, controlled by two people with direct ties to Walker's campaign.

Instead of calling themselves investigative reporters, Wisconsin Reporter, and Walker's campaign, should be investigated by the authorities for their questionable campaign-related contributions and activities, since Walker never claimed their work as an in-kind contribution.

And there is no way that any established, serious news source should be allowing them to put up their political propaganda as anything but that, with a warning that any resemblance between their spin narratives and a credible news source is purely coincidental.