After the state’s high court ordered files of the politically charged Wisconsin John Doe II investigation destroyed, something else happened instead: “The Guardian published a leaked trove of documents from the John Doe II proceedings, including court filings, draft filings, and selected evidence prepared and kept by only some members of the prosecution team.” A just-unsealed report from the Wisconsin Department of Justice suggests a range of possible illegalities and rights violations, as well as political motivations, in the conduct of the investigators [“Warren Henry,” The Federalist]:
[Th]hree hard drives in particular contained nearly 500,000 unique emails (from Yahoo and Gmail accounts, for example) and other documents (email attachments, for example) totaling millions of pages. The hard drives included transcripts of Google Chat logs between several individuals, most of which were purely personal (and sometimes very private) conversations. GAB [a state agency involved in the investigations] placed a large portion of these emails into several folders entitled, ‘Opposition Research’ or ‘Senate Opposition Research.’
For example,
investigators obtained, categorized, and maintained over 150 personal emails between [state] Senator Leah Vukmir and her daughter, including emails containing private medical information and other highly personal information. [WIDoJ] was unable to determine why investigators ever obtained, let alone saved and labeled, over 150 very private and very personal emails between a Senator and her child, or why investigators placed those emails in a folder named ‘Opposition Research.’
Earlier here.
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The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board was a non-partisan regulatory agency…
– Wikipedia
Can someone explain to me why a nonpartisan regulatory agency needs opposition research?
There are many government agencies that are supposed to be non-partisan, however, there is no was to ensure that employees or even agency management is truly non-partisan.
Don’t you remember the IRS going after conservative non-profits?
And where does the daughter of the state Senator go for justice? Do all these people just get to walk away?
And will the Wisconsin Supreme Court have the moral courage to permanently disbar all of the lawyers involved? As well as the judges.
The legal question that intrigues me–the secrecy law. What would prevent a person from going out of state and revealing the existence of the probe? State law only goes to the state border.
“State law only goes to the state border.”
Hardly. Otherwise all those John Doe leaks would have been legal if they had simply driven to South Beloit, Illinois, just an hour from the capitol, to leak them (it would work both ways, after all.) Crossing the state line does not give you permission to violate a court order.
no matter what your politics are, the “John Doe” investigation and its Stasi-like attempt to intimidate and squelch viewpoints and political expression should be very concerning. I am hopeful those involved that clearly knew their actions were wrong are punished.
“no matter what your politics are”—hmmm
ya think that there is a single Dem in Wisconsin that cares?
How silly does this make Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Abrahamson who famously dissented when the Wisconsin Supreme Court put an end to this whole charade?
And punished? What will be that punishment? A slap on the wrist? At a minimum, bar tickets should be pulled permanently.
“[WIDoJ] was unable to determine why investigators ever obtained, let alone saved and labeled, over 150 very private and very personal emails between a Senator and her child, or why investigators placed those emails in a folder named ‘Opposition Research”
Because it was opposition research.
“Because it was opposition research.”
But the investigators can’t say that because that would be admitting that the John Doe probe was a partisan witch hunt from the beginning.
And that is the dog that didn’t bark.
Having eliminated any other explanation, the only one left is a hit job.