Scott Walker Silent on Clinton and Walker Emails, Walker PAC Blows Message

Scott Walker and other Republican nominal candidates for president are reacting with awkward silence to news Hillary Clinton has called for the State Department to vet and release her emails transmitted during her tenure as Secretary. (Glueck, Politico) (Schmidt, NYT)

But no Republican candidate (as-yet-undeclared) is in as awkward a position as Scott Walker.

That's because Scott Walker's aides and appointees embezzled from military veterans (CBS News) and their families, and during Walker's Milwaukee County Executive tenure (2002 to 2010) Walker's administration installed a secret email-router system that Walker and aides used to campaign on the premises of a public office, a criminal probe revealed, after Walker first stonewalled the criminal investigation. (Bice, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)

"Did you have your own personal email account," Chris Wallace asked Scott Walker last year. (Mal Contends)

Walker backed down, refusing to answer Yes or No.

Chris Wallace's question among many others remain as Scott Walker's shady dealings look to haunt his faux run for the presidency.

The answer to Wallace's question is: Yes, Scott Walker had his own email address and was in receipt of and sent many emails on this illegal system.

The public release of documents has already established these facts, but Walker won't acknowledge these facts publicly, though he claims he did nothing wrong or illegal.

The Democratic National Committee said, "If Walker wants to talk about emails, let’s look at his history first." (Hall and Savidge, Wisconsin State Journal)

History? That something liberal professors teach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that Walker is working to destroy.

The Hillary/Scott Walker email story took a strange turn a couple of days ago when the Daily Caller (Pappas) reported Walker's PAC was calling for answers about email questions from Hillary, not Walker:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s political action committee is hitting Hillary Clinton over the recent revelations that she used private email accounts for official business while secretary of state, saying she needs to address questions about the legality of the practice.

“Hillary Clinton’s potential evasion of laws is something she should answer questions about,” Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for Walker’s new political action committee, Our American Revival, said in an email.

Either Kukowski has an unconventional sense of irony or Kukowski just embarrassed herself out of a job (but that will have to wait).

Writes Dee Hall and Nico Savidge in this morning's Wisconsin State Journal (Madison):

Walker has said that throughout his time as Milwaukee County executive, he had a clear policy that county employees were prohibited from using county resources or county time to be involved in political activities.

But investigative records released in February 2014 indicated Walker was aware his staff was communicating about campaign business using private emails during regular county  work hours.

In one message, Walker aide Cindy Archer wrote to deputy chief of staff Kelly Rindfleisch explaining that she used a private email account to communicate with Walker and his chief of staff, Tom Nardelli.

“Consider yourself now in the ‘inner circle’ :) I use this private account quite a bit to communicate with SKW and Nardelli,” Archer wrote, referring to Walker’s initials. “You should be sure you check it throughout the day.”

In a May 13, 2010, email on which Walker was copied, campaign adviser R.J. Johnson gave the final OK to two county staff members — Rindfleisch and Nardelli — along with campaign officials on what to say about another Walker employee, Darlene Wink, who had been caught posting campaign-related comments online about Walker during work time.

The approved statement: “No one in our office had any knowledge that Darlene was posting any comments during work hours. The county executive and chief of staff expressly forbid staff participation in any campaign-related activity while on county time.”

That is the tip of the spear, as Walker's political allies attempt to shut down and censor deliberations of the Wisconsin Supreme Court's consideration of cases from another criminal probe involving Walker's scheme, John Doe II

Putting aside the questions what shady characters like Tim Russell (embezzled from military veterans) and Kelly Rindfleisch (convicted of misconduct in public office) were doing as top aides to Scott Walker and what this tells us about Walker, note that in 2002 Walker ordered the installation of another secret router to avoid public disclosure and campaign.

"Bob Kiefert said that in 2002, when he was Milwaukee County human resources assistant director, he was called into Walker’s office by then-deputy chief of staff Tim Russell. Kiefert showed Russell how to set up a hard-wired Internet connection using a DSL modem and a telephone line. The network allowed county executive staff to send and receive emails and surf the Web outside the public system set up by the county’s Information Management Services Division in 1998," reported Matthew DeFour last year in the Wisconsin State Journal.

Kiefert broke this Scott Walker corruption story in the Green Bay Progressive.

Writes Kiefert:

During the 1990s, I was responsible for technology in the Department of Human Resources (DHR) and had set up a departmental network with email and a web site with it’s own ISDN line link to the internet. We were one of several county departments who had moved in this direction in the 90s in advance of a countywide system later developed by the central Information Management Services Division (IMSD).

DHR was only one floor below the County Executive’s Office in the Courthouse, and Tim Russell wanted to know how I did it. During our meeting in 2002, I told him.

As I remember, Russell told me that Scott Walker was very appreciative of my help and wanted to thank me personally. Russell took me over to Walker’s office for the meet and greet, but he turned out to be busy and only smiled and waved from his desk as we stood outside his office door.

I have no doubt that Walker knew what he was smiling and waving about. Russell had certainly made it clear that we were doing this at Walker’s bidding.

I have not really talked much about that day over the years and was not contacted about this information during the recent John Doe inquiry. That I assisted other departments within the county on technology issues during this period was certainly no secret at the time.

But I can tell you one thing, if Walker continues to deny knowledge of this email system and its usage, he is giving you a line of baloney.

Baloney is something the rest of America is going to have to get used to as a steady diet if Scott Walker prays more and gets instructions to form a presidential exploratory committee in the coming months.