New documents released to a Madison news reporter reveal that Gov. Scott Walker and his aides used personal email accounts to conduct state business, continuing a pattern developed in Milwaukee County government that formed the basis of the first John Doe investigation.
27 News’ Greg Neumann requested all of the personal emails of Walker’s top aides that discussed state business. The state dragged its heels but finally complied by handing over nearly 1,000 pages of emails. Neumann found that Walker’s top aides routinely used private emails to discuss “big policy moments” such as their strategy for the public employee union-busting Act 10 and also conducted discussions with lobbyists. The document dump raises questions about the Walker administration’s transparency and how well it complies with journalists’ requests for information about official state matters. If some or most of official matters are conducted on private emails, it’s a lot easier for the administration to release sanitized, incomplete material that doesn’t tell the whole story.
Neumann’s revelations also raise new questions about Walker’s truthfulness and apparent hypocrisy. During his failed campaign for president he criticized Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for using a private email server for State Department matters, even though it was legal to do so and her system had never been hacked, and he denied his state staffers were using personal emails for official business. Yet it looks like Walker and his top aides in county and state government used personal emails to avoid public scrutiny. And it looks like his aides covered up for him. For example, in December 2012 when the Shepherd asked Walker’s former campaign manager, Keith Gilkes, if the governor was using private emails at the state, he replied, “That’s just absurd.” Yet Neumann’s reporting shows that Gilkes himself, as Gov. Walker’s chief of staff, was among the top aides using personal emails to conduct state business. If we know one thing about Walker and the people he hires, it’s that the public will never get the truth out of them.
