Photo by Emily Mills Flickr CC
Remember when the Republican Party was the party of law and order? Well, forget it. In an astonishing reversal, the Republican Party of Wisconsin now has openly become the party of crime and corruption.
Throughout our history, politicians in both parties have been prosecuted for soliciting bribes and accepting other sleazy benefits under the table.
But Wisconsin Republicans under Gov. Scott Walker have just brazenly destroyed the law prosecutors have used to investigate criminal activity by public officials such as themselves.
In rapid “wham, bam” fashion, both Republican-controlled houses of the Legislature passed and Walker immediately signed a law exempting crimes by public officials from state John Doe investigations conducted by prosecutors under the supervision of a judge.
The law exempts from such criminal investigations just about any dishonest or corrupt activity a Wisconsin politician might ever wish to engage in.
These include misconduct in public office, bribery of public officials, theft, all violations of campaign finance laws, all election law offenses, corrupt influence of legislators, extortion, illegal gain from public contracts, lobby law violations, criminal violations of state ethics rules, false swearing and additional crimes that might occur during criminal investigations such as perjury, bribery of a witness or tampering with public records.
Wisconsin’s John Doe law has existed for more than 165 years. But it wasn’t until Walker and legislative Republicans were investigated for suspicion of breaking state campaign finance laws that Republicans decided to rewrite the John Doe law so it wouldn’t apply to them.
And Walker and Republicans didn’t even have to face any charges. It’s not only Walker and the Legislature who play fast and loose with laws in Wisconsin.
An ethically challenged Republican majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court shut down the John Doe into whether Republicans illegally coordinated campaign activity with supposedly independent right-wing groups that—surprise!—contributed millions of dollars to elect the Republican-friendly court majority.
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Six Walker Associates Convicted
But what do the citizens of Wisconsin lose by Walker and Republicans killing John Doe investigations into political corruption? We only have to look at some of the crimes that have been successfully prosecuted as a result of John Does.
A previous John Doe investigation into Walker’s office as Milwaukee County executive led to convictions of six Walker political associates, including three of his top staff.
A former deputy chief of staff and another political appointee stole nearly $75,000 raised to benefit families of veterans killed or wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a particularly sleazy incident uncovered in that investigation, a Walker volunteer who lived with the deputy chief of staff was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a 17-year-old Waukesha boy with whom he exchanged sexually explicit photographs.
Text messages exchanged with the teenager revealed the two adult men parked outside the teen’s house where he lived with his parents and unsuccessfully tried to coax him into joining his two “daddies” in their van.
Why would Republicans want to prevent a John Doe from investigating and charging those who rob veterans’ families or sexually prey upon underage children?
A John Doe into a major state scandal started in 2001 cleaned up illegal corruption in both political parties. State employees working for Republican and Democratic legislative caucuses routinely worked on legislators’ political campaigns while on the state payroll.
Taxpayers don’t want their tax dollars stolen to pay for political campaigns.
That John Doe convicted five state legislators and four aides and ended the political careers of the state’s most powerful legislative leaders, the Republican Assembly speaker and the Democratic state Senate majority leader.
Another major reform for clean government produced by that John Doe was the nearly unanimous, bipartisan legislative creation of an independent Government Accountability Board (GAB) to police government ethics and election practices.
The GAB, composed of six nonpartisan, retired judges, replaced two ineffectual partisan boards without any real power.
Every honest citizen, Republican and Democrat, wants clean, ethical and lawful government in our state. We don’t think our politicians should be above the law.
Go back and look again at that long list of political crimes prosecutors in Wisconsin are now prohibited from legally investigating through the John Doe process. Which of those criminal activities do we want our politicians committing with impunity?
Republicans claim grand juries can still be convened to look into the most egregious political crimes. They also know grand juries are extremely expensive, requiring as many as 17 people in court day after day. And that’s why they’re seldom used in the state.
Destroying the ability of prosecutors to investigate criminal activity by politicians has merely whetted the appetite of Walker and Republicans to continue removing barriers to crime and corruption in Wisconsin.
Next on their agenda: Destroying the nonpartisan Government Accountability Board and replacing it with two ineffectual partisan boards without any real power.
