Scott Walker's Extremism Led to Shadow Government

Scott Walker e-mail to aide Tim Russell, former Walker deputy chief of staff,
and Walker Housing Director for the Dept of Health and Human Services

"We can't afford another story like this one. No one can give them any reason to do another story."

The revelation that Scott Walker's inner circle was responsible for setting up a secret e-mail-computer system that was used to conceal illegal fundraising is a predictable outcome from this extremist and secretive bunch that literally locked the doors to the people's house of Wisconsin, the state capitol.

There is no commitment to representative democracy from this gang facing recall. That's why they feel no need to abide by Wisconsin Open Meeting laws, and feel entitled ordering the arrest of opposition representatives who try to gain entry into their own offices like in the Winter-Spring of 2010.

Scott Walker's Criminal Path to Power

Truth is these are not very bright guys as the John Doe investigation into Walker's tenure in Milwaukee County and his 2010 campaign is demonstrating, as each new arrest flushes out a new act of corruption, never mind jetting around the country bagging $millions in out-of-state campaign funds.

"This was a shadow government meant to further the political career of Scott Walker," said Graeme Zielinski, spokesman for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. "All of them knew what was right and what was wrong, and they chose the crooked path."

Walker says he didn't know. Few take his assurances at face value anymore.

Scott Walker Email to Aide Tim Russell
Clearly by mentioning 'laptops' Walker is aware of the illegal scheme to do campaign work in the government office with campaign laptops and on a private campaign network.

The complaint also details how Rindfleish did fundraising for Lt. Gov. candidate Brett Davis, which the complaint states 'persons associated with the Friends of Scott Walker campaign committee generally favored Brett Davis over other candidates for the office of Lieutenant Governor.'

Here's the kicker, though: Even though Rindfleish has been under the investigative cross hairs for months, the Walker campaign had kept her on the pay roll up until a week ago!

Speaking of keeping people on the pay roll, guess who was Brett Davis' campaign manager aka the guy that was helping coordinate all this illegal activity out of Walker's government office? The governor's current spokesperson, Cullen Werwie. - Uppity Wisconsin

What did Walker mean in his e-mail on the secret system in which he says, "We can't afford another story like this one. No one can give them any reason to do another story."

Wisconsin citizens might be more assured had Walker written, 'What we are doing is wrong. This whole secret system is wrong and should not have been set-up in the first place; our commitment is to serve Milwaukee and Wisconsin and not Scott Walker.'

The Walker campaign has hired former U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic to respond to the request [subpoenaed emails by John Doe prosecutors], paying his firm nearly $110,000 over the past year, reports the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Corrupt Ex-US Atty Steven Biskupic Now Defends Sleaze in Scott Walker Campaign

Corruption

Moving from the position of corrupt, Bush-era U.S. Attorney to defender of the Scott Walker campaign has been seamless for Steven Biskupic.

Biskupic has disgraced the office of U.S. Attorney [2001-08) though his corrupt prosecutions of Georgia Thompson, Wisconsin Navy Veteran Keith Roberts, and alleged 'Voter Fraud' crimes that saw Biskupic use the U.S. Attorney's office for the political purposes of the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration.

So now Biskupic and the GOP law firm where Biskupic sought refuge are defending the Scott Walker campaign against a John Doe investigation.

No shocker there.

Turds like Biskupic have been shilling for the GOP for years, persecuting innocent people; and now they are protecting crooks like Walker.

One could write that Biskupuc has found a home, but he has lived in the arms of the amoral GOP for years.

As for Biskupic's public disgrace, he has never issued one word of regret for his persecutions.

John Edwards, Justice and the Rule of Lenity

Political Persecution in an electoral swing state? Why no questions?

As we read of the federal prosecution of John Edwards, we ought consider Scott Horton's Primer in Political Prosecutions, mustering some skepticism about the federal government launching such a heavy-handed criminal case.

Bloomberg reports, "John Edwards, the former U.S. presidential candidate accused of accepting illegal campaign contributions to hide an extramarital affair, should face an October criminal trial, a federal prosecutor said."

The criminal case is U.S. v. Edwards, 11-00161, U.S. District Court, Middle District of North Carolina.

The "federal grand jury indicted Edwards this month on charges of accepting illegal campaign funds, conspiracy and making false statements," reports Bloomberg.

On June 10, NBC 17 reported, "The U.S. case against John Edwards includes 300,000 pages of documents ... ."

Guess the defense will have to do some quick Summer reading.

U.S. Attorney George Holding, a George W. Bush appointee, resigned in early June, just after Edwards was indicted.

Holding said not one word about the U.S. Atty scandal, a forgotten memory in American corporate media.

Edwards was indicted on June 3, at which time Edwards blasted the prosecution, reports McClatchy News.

A former chairman of the Federal Elections Commission issued a statement through Edwards’ legal team that called the charges 'misguided' and based on an 'erroneous' reading of the law.

"A criminal prosecution of a candidate on these facts would be outside anything I would expect after decades of experience with the campaign finance laws," said Scott E. Thomas, an FEC commissioner for 20 years.

Edwards' case has the hallmarks of another corrupt Bush-Cheney persecution crafted by a young U.S. Attorney with a political agenda using federal law in a creative, brand-new way to get a political opponent.

Will the new U.S. Atty halt the prosecution? We should be watching and asking questions.

Like Wisconsin's Steven Biskupic's politically motivated prosecution [among many] of Georgia Thompson with the GOP press in tow, the force of the federal government is wielded with very little comment in this most depoliticised of countries.

From the Huffington Post:

Holding is a member of the prominent Smithfield banking family that controls much of First Citizens BancShares Inc., the parent company of First Citizens Bank. Plans of his resignation were first reported by The News and Observer of Raleigh on June 3.

Rule of Lenity

Here's a look back at the persecution of an innocent woman in Wisconsin, Georgia Thompson, and a repeat of the media's disinclination to challenge federal prosecutions.

The opinion [overturning the conviction of an innocent woman persecuted by U.S. Atty Stephen Biskupic] notes that this 'open-ended quality' and '(h)aziness' of the [criminal] statute should never be used by prosecutors to bring creative and novel prosecutions, per the 'Rule of Lenity.'

The Rule of Lenity, as [Chief Judge Frank H.] Easterbrook notes, is the judicial doctrine that 'ambiguity in criminal legislation be read against the prosecutor, lest the judiciary create, in common-law fashion, offenses that have never received legislative approbation … .'

Let’s translate.

Prosecutors should not invent crimes by stretching laws to the breaking point so they can bring prosecutions under our laws that were not made to ban imaginary crimes dreamed up by creative prosecutors—or in Biskupic’s case, a corrupt prosecutor seeking the favor of Karl Rove.

Prosecutorial Discretion

But we do have a check on hazy, open-ended laws, so that prosecutions of innocents never have to reach an appeals court.

It’s called 'prosecutorial discretion,' but it’s in short supply nowadays, and Biskupic is not alone in his refusal to exercise it (liberals especially like to use the prosecutors’ office as vehicles for their political careers, too often excluding prosecutorial discretion in the conduct of their offices).

As discussed in an address, The Federal Prosecutor, by the great jurist Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), prosecutorial discretion—measured and well-considered decision-making by the prosecutor on whom he or she is going to prosecute—requires that that prosecutors 'select those in which the offense is the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof the most certain.'

Jackson notes that a 'sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims ... .'

When Biskupic (still) defends his prosecution against the innocent Thompson by noting he was able to convince a jury and two trial judges of his view of the charges, he misses Jackson’s point that Biskupic should exercise prosecutorial discretion precisely because the prosecutor’s office is immensely powerful and persuasive, and that 'the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.'

Thompson and Biskupic’s current voting-fraud prosecution victims would agree.

Holding was one of the last U.S. attys held over from the Bush-Cheney regime.

Nothing Holding says should be trusted, certainly not his hazy, novel prosecution of a political figure launched on the eve of a presidential election in an important swing state.

Prosecutors Gone Wild

John Farmer, the attorney general of New Jersey from 1999 to 2002, has a piece in today's New York Times entitled "Prosecutors Gone Wild" that lists a few of the more egregious cases of misconduct from prosecutors nationwide:

In 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit took the extraordinary step of ordering the release of a convicted Wisconsin state employee during oral argument; it then reversed her federal conviction, which had been based on the government’s overreaching application of the 'theft of honest services' corruption statute. She later said that the United States attorney [Steven Biskupic], who had been appointed by President George W. Bush, offered her leniency if she would cooperate in a case against the governor, a Democrat [Jim Doyle] in a tight re-election campaign.

We ask again who is policing the prosecutors: It ought to be we.

'Ballot Security' in Wisconsin Has Civil Rights Workers Wary

It has brought to our attention that "(s)enior Justice Department officials told civil-rights organizations they plan to deploy hundreds of poll monitors in November to prevent voting-rights violations and deter fraud (Perez, Wall Street Journal, September 9. 2008).

In light of the Wisconsin DOJ/GOP's efforts at voter suppression (that now looks to fail) and the McCain Campaign project sending misleading absentee ballots to voters, the presence of U.S. DOJ officials at polling places has civil rights groups nervous, though it's not confirmed that the DOJ officials will be in Wisconsin at this point.

As Evan Perez writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Some critics of the Bush administration said the Justice Department appears to be giving equal weight to preventing vote fraud and enforcing laws aimed at helping minorities cast ballots. 'For the department, the focus should be on voter access,' said Kristen Clarke, voter-participation co-director for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. 'It does seem the criminal division is spending some of their capital on vote fraud, which is disconcerting.' ... In the 2006 election, the department came under criticism from Democrats and some judges for pursuing cases involving Democrats that courts later ruled should never have been brought.

The U.S. DOJ pursuing voting so-called fraud cases in Wisconsin that should never have been brought is not a new development in Wisconsin. As Scott Horton lays out in Harper's (Sept. 7, 2007):

We know that (US Atty) Steven Biskupic, the U.S. Attorney in Milwaukee, was initially put on a list of those to be fired by Karl Rove’s office. Then suddenly Mr. Biskupic got deeply engaged in a series of truly dubious cases, all of which had a distinctly Rovian political flavor. First, Biskupic became one of the nation’s most enthusiastic participants in the 'voting fraud' fraud. He brought an array of insane cases, including one against a grandmother, which were detailed by The New York Times in an acid review of Biskupic’s mercenary political style. These cases generally involved voters who made honest mistakes about registration, but were prosecuted anyway (with many convicted). The targets were always Democrats who were from the major threat communities publicly identified by Rove—minority groups from the inner city. And the prosecutions were transparently pursued for purposes of voter suppression (i.e., an arguably criminal agenda).

The recent creation of a state nonpartisan task force charged with investigating voter fraud allegations (announced in mid-September) and chaired by Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm and Wisconsin Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen, co-chair of McCain’s campaign, does not assuage concerns that one political party, the GOP, dedicated to voter suppression as one tactic of its electoral strategy, will prove successful in disenfranchising 1,000s of Wisconsin voters.

Chisholm is an honest DA, but I do not understand why he is trucking with dishonest players investigating fictitious voting fraud when even U.S. Attorney Stephen Biskupic concluded that no widespread fraud existed in the 2004 election.

Van Hollen, Chisholm, and anyone claiming an interest in fair elections ought to be conducting an investigation into McCain's dirty-trick absentee ballot applications stunt.

The fact that even the Milwaukee police department (not known for it judicious investigative techniques as its unwise forays into federal election law and voter fraud show) has been discredited and knocked down so hard it ought never be able to stand does not inspire confidence in those simply wanting to cast a vote because the GOP has not renounced its commitment to keeping the wrong-voting people from casting their ballots.

To help fight voting suppression and its allies, the nonpartisan Election protection coalition (http://www.866ourvote.org/) is a great resource.

Readers are invited to post other resources in comments. The stakes are high.

The ACLU and NAACP hit the state voter fraud task force on Sept. 17.

ACLU, NAACP Object To Discriminatory Election Enforcement In Wisconsin (9/17/2008)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: liberty@aclu-wi.org

The ACLU of Wisconsin and Milwaukee Branch of the NAACP are deeply troubled by the apparent discriminatory focus of the "election fraud" task force set up by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm.

The formation of a voter fraud task force only in Milwaukee County reinforces an unsubstantiated perception that City of Milwaukee residents are more prone to commit election fraud. And, regardless of intent, a racial subtext is barely below the surface, given the fact that Milwaukee is the only majority-minority city in the state.

The truth is that voting irregularities can and do happen throughout Wisconsin - but when they do not occur in Milwaukee, they are called "mistakes" and not "fraud." There was, for example, no law enforcement outcry when earlier this year we learned that hundreds of voters in Oconomowoc voted at the wrong polling place for years, in ways that likely influenced local election outcomes. There is no evidence that voting errors in Milwaukee are any more grounded in "fraud" than were the voting errors in Oconomowoc.

Nor does unlawful voting only occur in Milwaukee. To the contrary, the clear majority of allegations of vote fraud in 2006 occurred outside the city of Milwaukee, in dozens of communities around the state.

The ACLU and NAACP also question involvement by the Milwaukee Police Department in any election task force until such time as there is public disclosure of the role of officers in publishing a biased report earlier this year on the 2004 election making recommendations they had no authority to make, without the approval of their superiors.

The much ballyhooed, but practically non-existent, phenomenon of voter fraud does not warrant the development of a "task force" anywhere, but certainly not just in Milwaukee. Indeed, as law enforcement officials recognized this morning, the City Election Commission has made great strides in promoting fair and transparent elections, and the creation of a "fraud" task force only undermines faith in those elections. State and local officials should focus time and resources on facilitating election administration, not frustrating the rights of persons lawfully entitled to vote.

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