Scott Walker Tag

The "John Doe" investigations of Wisconsin conservatives, targeting particularly Governor Scott Walker, was a shameful chapter of political abuse of the prosecutorial process. My most recent post was The rotting corpse of Wisconsin’s John Doe investigation still stinks, which details the history of investigations based on unconstitutional attempts to silence conservatives. The cases eventually were thrown out and shut down by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. But not until lives had been ruined, and people terrorized.

You may recall the two John Doe investigations of Scott Walker, his supporters and almost the entire Wisconsin conservative movement. It was a nasty, vicious investigation which saw military-style raids in the middle of the night. There was John Doe No. 1, investigating Scott Walker’s time as Milwaukee County Executive. They never came up with any wrongdoing by him.

Who's the horror movie figure that keeps on popping up just when you think you've killed him? That's pretty much the nature of the anti-conservative witch hunt carried out under Wisconsin's so-called John Doe law. Every time the investigation seemed to be beat, the investigating prosecutors would rear their ugly heads. There was John Doe No. 1, investigating Scott Walker's time as Milwaukee County Executive. They never came up with any wrongdoing by him. Then there was John Doe No. 2, regarding Walker's alleged unlawful collusion with conservative groups during the recall election. It is John Doe No. 2 that has generated litigation over the past three years. In the end, every court that ruled on the issue found that the entire prosecution legal theory was legally unfounded -- that even if these conservative groups did what they were alleged to have done, it was constitutionally protected speech and not illegal. Lives were ruined over an attempt to punish constitutionally protected speech by conservatives. We have several dozen posts about the history of John Doe No. 2 . Scroll through our John Doe (WI) tag. The investigation was revealed in The Wall Street Journal on November 18, 2013, Wisconsin Political Speech Raid - Subpoenas hit allies of Scott Walker as his re-election campaign looms:

We extensively covered the two Wisconsin "John Doe" cases in which prosecutors targeted Scott Walker and conservatives in Wisconsin. John Doe No. 1 concerned Walker's time as Milwaukee County Executive. John Doe No.2 was the more notorious, as a Democratic lead prosecutor unleashed the equivalent of SWAT teams on conservatives, raiding homes, seizing electronic records, and generally terrorizing innocent people. It was a nasty, vicious investigation (note: Michael Lutz in this interview from late April 2015 committed suicide in late July 2015). https://youtu.be/FPoSV9v7J1s John Doe No. 2 was definitively shut down by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which found that it was based on a faulty and unconstitutional legal theory, and employed outrageous tactics that never should be repeated (emphasis added):