We learn even more about the nature of Wisconsin Democrats, and it's ugly:
In the course of its secretive “John Doe” investigation, the [Government Accountability Board] hoovered up millions of personal emails from Republican donors and supporters, and even raided people’s homes, while forbidding them to talk about it.
We knew that. The "investigation" was supposed to stop after various courts told the GAB to stop. They didn't, though:
The prosecutors felt justified in these actions because they had already made up their minds about their targets’ guilt. As the report says, “After reviewing the emails exchanged between the attorneys at GAB, it is apparent that GAB attorneys had prejudged the guilt of Governor Walker, Wisconsin Republicans, and related organizations that they were investigating and this dramatically influenced their ability to give competent legal advice. GAB attorneys did not act in a detached and professional manner. The most reasonable inference is that they were on a mission to bring down the Walker campaign and the Governor himself.”
The investigation continued despite its failure to find anything like the sort of violations it was ostensibly intended to investigate. It continued despite court orders to stop. And prosecutors retained evidence (including medical and other records about Republican officials and donors, kept in a file labeled “opposition research”) even after being ordered by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to turn all the information over. It was a lawless exercise of prosecutorial power, for political ends.
It's unbelievable, really. A government-funded prosecution of political enemies? Whoever heard of such a thing? Guess we wouldn't want to draw any parallels, right? Or should we?
A senior Justice Department official demoted last week for concealing his meetings with the men behind the anti-Trump “dossier” had even closer ties to Fusion GPS, the firm responsible for the incendiary document, than have been disclosed, Fox News has confirmed: The official’s wife worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 election.
Contacted by Fox News, investigators for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) confirmed that Nellie H. Ohr, wife of the demoted official, Bruce G. Ohr, worked for the opposition research firm last year. The precise nature of Mrs. Ohr’s duties – including whether she worked on the dossier – remains unclear but a review of her published works available online reveals Mrs. Ohr has written extensively on Russia-related subjects. HPSCI staff confirmed to Fox News that she was paid by Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016.
Fusion GPS has attracted scrutiny because Republican lawmakers have spent the better part of this year investigating whether the dossier, which was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, served as the basis for the Justice Department and the FBI to obtain FISA surveillance last year on a Trump campaign adviser named Carter Page.
So we have a spouse of a high-ranking Justice Department official working with an opposition research firm that's trying to bring down Donald Trump. And remember, what Robert Mueller is doing is investigating potential Trump malfeasance. The stench is getting awfully strong -- no wonder everyone would rather talk about Roy Moore.
Everyone who reads this feature knows that I have remained #NeverTrump throughout this election cycle, even though I have reserved most of my criticism for his opponent, who richly deserves it. In a season of lies, the Star Tribune editorial board uncorked a beaut this morning:
Anyone who saw Donald Trump’s boast of his celebrity-bestowed ability to indiscriminately grab women by the genitals as a new political low was proved wrong by Sunday’s debate.
That’s when the Republican nominee hit a frightening nadir in American politics by saying on live television that if he became president, his opponent, Hillary Clinton “would be in jail.” There is, and can be, no normalizing of such statements. This country doesn’t make political prisoners of rivals. Part of democracy’s hope and promise, and what has always set the U.S. apart from so many other countries, is the peaceful transition of power every four years. Opponents here are defeated, not imprisoned.
Okay, then. Explain this picture:
The master of the felonious veto
That's the mug shot of Rick Perry, former governor of Texas. He was charged with abuse of office because he vetoed funding for a state "public integrity unit" that was protecting another public official, the district attorney of Travis County, Rosemary Lehmberg, who also has a mug shot:
Drink for me, drink for my health, you know I can't drink any more
Lehmberg was driving drunk. Her arrest video remains an eternal classic of the genre:
By the way, Lehmberg is still in office.
Perry is hardly the only public official who has been through the wringer. I've written more than once about the abuse heaped upon Scott Walker and his colleagues in Wisconsin. Writing for the Federalist, Bre Payton provides a handy compilation of selective outrage. A particular favorite:
‘I could have arrested Karl Rove on any given day,’ Pelosi said to laughter, during a sit-down with reporters. ‘I’m not kidding. There’s a prison here in the Capitol … If we had spotted him in the Capitol, we could have arrested him.’ …
Asked on what grounds she could have arrested Rove, Pelosi replied, ‘Oh, any number. But there were some specific ones for his being in contempt of Congress. But we didn’t.’
All sixteen of the examples in Payton's excellent piece share one thing in common -- all of the purported perpretrators are people who were somehow hostile to the Left. It's possible that the Star Tribune has editorialized against the the outrages against Perry and Walker, but I don't recall seeing it.
Hillary Clinton has done some awful things in her life. She may not get called to account for them. But to pretend that Trump's musing is something new and awful? Give me a break.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by three Democratic district attorneys seeking to revive a criminal investigation into Gov. Scott Walker’s recall campaign — effectively ending the legal wrangling over the four-year-old probe.
The decision marks a major victory for Walker and his Republican allies, who mounted a vigorous challenge to the secretive, so-called John Doe II investigation that involved investigators issuing dozens of subpoenas and seizing equipment and millions of documents from those under investigation.
In a statement Monday, Walker said the U.S. Supreme Court, Wisconsin Supreme Court and other judges have all reached the same conclusion — “that this investigation by prosecutors was without merit and thus must be ended.”
“I applaud the individuals and organizations who fought for and successfully defended their First Amendment rights against political opponents who wanted to silence them,” Walker said.
Needless to say, the secret policemen are disappointed:
In a joint statement, the three district attorneys who appealed the case — [Milwakee County Prosecutor John] Chisholm, Dane County’s Ismael Ozanne and Iowa County’s Larry Nelson — said they were disappointed by the decision.
“The state Supreme Court decision, left intact by today’s order, prohibits Wisconsin citizens from enacting laws requiring the full disclosure of disguised contributions to a candidate, i.e., monies expended by third parties at the direction of a candidate for the benefit of that candidate’s election,” they said.
“We are proud to have taken this fight as far as the law would allow and we look forward to the day when Wisconsin adopts a more enlightened view of the need for transparency in campaign finance.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but they are proud that they have gotten their asses handed to them at every level of jurisdiction. In a better world, all three of these individuals would be disbarred. They won't be. They are now required to turn over all the materials they seized within 30 days. I am willing to wager that Chisholm and his partners in sleaze will turn the materials over via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
What has happened to Walker and his political allies in Wisconsin is similar to the lawfare tactics used in Texas against Tom DeLay and Rick Perry. In the end, it all gets thrown out, but the process itself is the punishment. It's a disgrace.
Dealing Gov. Scott Walker a victory just as his presidential campaign gets underway, the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a sweeping decision Thursday ruled the governor's campaign and conservative groups had not violated campaign finance laws.
The ruling means the end of the investigation, which has been stalled for 18 months after a lower court judge determined no laws were violated even if Walker's campaign and the groups had worked together as prosecutors believe.
The victory isn't Walker's, actually. It's a victory for free speech and against some truly awful behavior on the part of John Chisholm, the Milwaukee County prosecutor behind the act, and his bobo special prosecutor Francis Schmitz. Writing for the majority, Justice Michael Gableman was categorical in his assertions about the case:
"It is utterly clear that the special prosecutor has employed theories of law that do not exist in order to investigate citizens who were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing," Gableman wrote.
Calling the challengers brave, Gableman wrote that their litigation gave the court "an opportunity to re-endorse its commitment to upholding the fundamental right of each and every citizen to engage in lawful political activity and to do so free from the fear of the tyrannical retribution of arbitrary or capricious governmental prosecution. Let one point be clear: our conclusion today ends this unconstitutional John Doe investigation."
It's about time. The case has stunk on ice from the outset. It's bad enough that the investigators were conducting nighttime raids on people who had done nothing wrong, but the prosecutors were regularly leaking results of their "investigation" to willing henchmen in the media. The process itself was the punishment, as Gableman noted in his opinion (via Ann Althouse):
"The breadth of the documents gathered pursuant to subpoenas and seized pursuant to search warrants is amazing. Millions of documents, both in digital and paper copy, were subpoenaed and/or seized. Deputies seized business papers, computer equipment, phones, and other devices, while their targets were restrained under police supervision and denied the ability to contact their attorneys. The special prosecutor obtained virtually every document possessed by the Unnamed Movants relating to every aspect of their lives, both personal and professional, over a five-year span (from 2009 to 2013). Such documents were subpoenaed and/or seized without regard to content or relevance to the alleged violations of Ch. 11. As part of this dragnet, the special prosecutor also had seized wholly irrelevant information, such as retirement income statements, personal financial account information, personal letters, and family photos."
Sweet stuff, that. I don't know whether Chisholm or Schmitz will be looking at any repercussions for their actions, but they should really get the full Nifong. The entire investigation was an abuse of power and their conduct was reprehensible.
