Wisconsin court ends probe of presidential hopeful Walker

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the John Doe probe, which targeted conservative groups, is over.

Matt Menendez, a counsel at the Brennan Center, said in a statement that the ruling “raises grave concerns about the fairness and impartiality of the court in this case”. Prosecutors had alleged that Mr. Walker’s election committee coordinated with groups such as the Wisconsin Club for Growth on issue advocacy – communications that don’t expressly call for a candidate to be elected or defeated – and said the groups should have reported their spending and abided by fundraising limits.

The court’s decision – split 4-2 along ideological lines – ruled that the state’s anti-coordination law is too broad and vague to comply with the First Amendment. One justice didn’t participate in the case.

Justice Shirley Abrahamson said in a dissenting opinion that “within the realm of issue advocacy, the majority opinion’s theme is ‘Anything Goes.'”.

Good cases certainly can be made for (in alphabetic order) Dr. Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul, Rick Perry and Marco Rubio.

Walker had ventured to nearby Iowa and further afield to Israel to woo would-be voters, all the while shadowed by the uncertain status of the Wisconsin probe.

“I think it would be hard to argue that the places she’s been involved within the first four years of President (Barack) Obama’s tenure aren’t more messed up today than they were before she and the president took office”, he charged.

“It is time to move past this unwarranted investigation that has cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars”, said Ashlee Strong, Walker campaign spokeswoman.

Republicans intruduced Senate Bill 43 and companion Assembly Bill 68 that maintains John Doe as a tool for prosecutors, but would add a number of safeguards, more accountability, and transparency. Chisholm secretly investigated conservative groups and donors who backed Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign during the 2012 recall election, Eric Boehm writes for Watchdog.org.

Schmitz “was the instigator of a “perfect storm” of wrongs” visited upon those in the eye of the probe and “those who dared to associate with them”, Gableman said in the ruling. On that basis, he found the subpoenas and search warrants issued by Schmitz to be invalid as well. They denied any wrongdoing.

The court simply adopted rules – THAT WERE PROPOSED BY THE WMC – that say very simply that “that the receipt of a lawful campaign contribution shall not, by itself, warrant judicial recusal”. Furthermore, prosecutors said that Johnson once stated “We own CFG”, and that his business partner Deborah Jordahl was a signatory to the group’s bank account.

Outlining his vision of the criminal justice system, the Republican presidential candidate cited the city of Camden as a model for rebuilding trust between law enforcement and residents while also driving down violent crime. Now he can campaign in early primary states without concern about the investigation uncovering anything damaging.

The U.S. Supreme Court on May 18 upheld that decision.

Also on Wednesday, Walker discussed an ad he ran during his 2014 re-election campaign that described the decision to end a pregnancy as “an agonizing one”.

John Doe II was authorized on September 5, 2012 by Milwaukee County Reserve Judge Kluka. The next year, he and his legislative allies engineered passage of legislation curbing the power of some of the state’s public worker unions.

Illustrative of the nationwide scope of the current attacks on political free speech, last week The Wall Street Journal revealed that Kevin Kennedy, director of a “Government Accountability Board” authorized by Wisconsin’s speech restriction law, had a long-standing association with former IRS tax-exempt organizations director Lois Lerner, an individual central to the agency’s ongoing persecution of groups with ideologies contrary to that of the current administration.