According to aweekend report in the Wall Street Journal, John Doe #2 has up to 29conservative groups in its sights—including the Friends of Scott Walker, Walker’sgubernatorial campaign committee.
The Wall StreetJournal based its report on an interview with Eric O’Keefe, a longtime“free-market” activist who’s also on the board of the Wisconsin Club forGrowth, one of the groups that was named when we thought that only three groupswere caught up in this investigation.
Well, O’Keefe must berunning scared and trying to get ahead of the story to spin it his own way.
The WSJ is portrayingthe “flurry of subpoenas” as a “raid on political speech.”
Hogwash.
My bet is that the 29state and national right-wing groups—which allegedly include Scott Walker’scampaign, Wisconsin Club for Growth, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce(WMC), the League of American Voters, the anti-gay Wisconsin Family Action, theKoch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, and theRepublican Governors Association—were more likely coordinating fundraising,shuffling money from one group to another to evade campaign disclosure rules,timing their ads and/or synching their messaging during the 2011 and 2012 recalls.
If you’ve beenreading the Shepherd, you know that Walker’s top campaign aide, R.J. Johnson,has longtime connections to Wisconsin Club for Growth.
Did Johnson cut thoseties when he went to work for Walker’s campaign in 2009? When he was being copied on Milwaukee County emails? Was Johnson still workingfor Walker after Walker took office in 2011, while appearing as a spokesman forWisconsin Club for Growth?
That’s something theprosecutors are probably taking a look at—among other things.
I’ll have more aboutthis development in this week’s Shepherd, but for now, here’s my coverage onthe new John Doe investigation and the Koch brothers’ dark money in Wisconsin.
