As Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign moves ever closer to the president and his family, shrill Republican attacks on Mueller’s prosecutors as jackbooted thugs conducting “a political witch hunt” maligning Trump have escalated. In other words, Republicans are employing exactly the same tactics they used in Wisconsin to shut down legitimate investigations by law enforcement into government corruption at the highest levels.
It may not take a “Saturday Night Massacre” by Trump firing Mueller and his team of prosecutors as they close in. Gov. Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans ended a long-running criminal investigation into a suspected massive money laundering scheme by simply passing a law outlawing so-called John Doe investigations by prosecutors into political corruption. Walker, who signed that outrageous law, was the focus of two criminal John Doe investigations led by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm.
The first convicted six Walker staff members and political associates when he was Milwaukee County Executive of crimes ranging from money laundering to embezzlement and illegal political activity. The second (by Chisholm and three other state district attorneys) investigated Gov. Walker and Republican legislative leaders for suspected criminal activity during a 2012 recall election to launder millions of dollars through independent political organizations to cover up bribery of public officials by political donors. A four-member Republican majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court ended that investigation in 2015 with a brazenly political ruling that such activity wasn’t illegal in Wisconsin.
Badger State Dictatorship
Lest anyone forget how openly corrupt Wisconsin has now become, Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel just recommended contempt of court charges against nine people associated with the Walker investigation: the special prosecutor, members of Chisholm’s office (but not Chisholm, himself) and employees of the former Government Accountability Board (since destroyed by the Republican legislature) that was formerly responsible for overseeing fair elections and ethics in government.
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Why now, two years after Wisconsin Republicans succeeded in shutting down the investigation in a way that made their widespread political corruption even more obvious? Well, Schimel may not care about prosecuting Republican political corruption, but like other Republicans these days, he cares a lot about leaks to the media that expose Republican political corruption. Politicians leak secret stuff to the media all the time, but they hate leaks by someone else that make them look bad. The public, on the other hand, loves leaks for good reason. The respectable term is “whistle blower.” Whistle blowers in government inform citizens about things going on that politicians want to cover up.
When the state Supreme Court shut down the investigation, it also ordered that all evidence be destroyed. Golly, I wonder why? But that couldn’t happen immediately because other cases and appeals were continuing. Schimel can’t prove who’s responsible, but he now wants folks associated with the investigation to be charged with contempt for failing to protect evidence from being leaked.
Toxic Campaign Donations
Ten months after the investigation ended, The Guardian US published leaked evidence from the John Doe investigation, and anyone who cares about honest government should be glad it did. That’s how voters in Wisconsin learned a Texas billionaire who owned a company that produced toxic lead used in paint who was being sued for millions of dollars for brain damage to poor children secretly donated $750,000 to Walker and legislative Republicans who passed legislation to shield his company from legal liability. They also published that mining company Gogebic Taconite secretly donated $1.2 million to Walker and Republicans who allowed the company to rewrite state mining and environmental regulations.
The leaks exposed the false premise of the state Supreme Court’s decision that the crimes being investigated by law enforcement—politicians coordinating with independent groups to allow anonymous donors to bribe politicians—weren’t crimes in Wisconsin.
Actually, it’s been illegal for independent groups to coordinate with candidates ever since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision that allowed independent groups to spend funds on elections without identifying donors. Even the infamous 2010 Citizens United decision that unleashed unlimited spending by those independent groups specifically continued that prohibition. But the U.S. Supreme Court, evenly divided after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, declined to review an appeal of the Wisconsin decision.
Many people in Wisconsin know exactly why the Republican majority on the state Supreme Court intentionally got the law so wrong. The independent groups involved in the Walker case—Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce—were the largest political donors to the four justices who ruled in their favor, contributing more than $10 million to their elections to the court.
Wisconsin showed Donald Trump how to corrupt justice. The only question now is whether Republicans in Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court with a new Trump-appointed justice will be as complicit as Wisconsin’s Republican legislature and Supreme Court in allowing Trump to get away with totally destroying legal investigations into political corruption.
