Political Oppression in Wisconsin

This article by David French at National Review gives a chilling description of what the politically driven John Doe investigations looked like to conservatives on the ground in Wisconsin.

Quote:

For dozens of conservatives, the years since Scott Walker’s first election as governor of Wisconsin transformed the state — known for pro-football championships, good cheese, and a population with a reputation for being unfailingly polite — into a place where conservatives have faced early-morning raids, multi-year secretive criminal investigations, slanderous and selective leaks to sympathetic media, and intrusive electronic snooping. Yes, Wisconsin, the cradle of the progressive movement and home of the “Wisconsin idea” — the marriage of state governments and state universities to govern through technocratic reform — was giving birth to a new progressive idea, the use of law enforcement as a political instrument, as a weapon to attempt to undo election results, shame opponents, and ruin lives.

A John Doe investigation differs from a normal criminal investigation in that it replaces a grand jury with a single, supervising judge, and it imposes strict secrecy requirements on the targets of the investigation. That is, defendants in a John Doe investigation are not even allowed to explain to their neighbors and friends what's happening to them, let alone defend themselves in the media. Even if the investigation is conducted in good faith, the whole thing just sounds oppressive, if not wholly unconsitutional. Of course, in this case, the investigations appear to have been conducted in bad faith. As a consequence, they egregiously trampled the First and Fourth Amendment rights of conservatives in Wisconsin.

Quote:

If the first series of John Doe investigations was “everything Walker,” the second series was “everything conservative,” as [Milwaukee District Attorney] [John] Chisholm had launched an investigation of not only Walker (again) but the Wisconsin Club for Growth and dozens of other conservative organizations, this time fishing for evidence of allegedly illegal “coordination” between conservative groups and the Walker campaign. In the second John Doe, Chisholm had no real evidence of wrongdoing. Yes, conservative groups were active in issue advocacy, but issue advocacy was protected by the First Amendment and did not violate relevant campaign laws. Nonetheless, Chisholm persuaded prosecutors in four other counties to launch their own John Does, with Judge Kluka overseeing all of them. Empowered by a rubber-stamp judge, partisan investigators ran amok. They subpoenaed and obtained (without the conservative targets’ knowledge) massive amounts of electronic data, including virtually all the targets’ personal e-mails and other electronic messages from outside e-mail vendors and communications companies. The investigations exploded into the open with a coordinated series of raids on October 3, 2013. These were home invasions, including those described above. Chisholm’s office refused to comment on the raid tactics (or any other aspect of the John Doe investigations), but witness accounts regarding the two John Doe investigations are remarkably similar: early-morning intrusions, police rushing through the house, and stern commands to remain silent and tell no one about what had occurred.

The article is a fascinating read. The issues involved are far larger than just criminally partisan prosecutors and judges. As the government promulgates more and more intrusive, arcane, and ambiguous laws, the power of prosecutors to harrass and oppress political opponents grows exponentially. Unfortunately, the people we empower to administer, execute, and uphold these laws are human, with all of the biases and weaknesses that that entails. By the way, liberals should remember that those humans are not always going to be like-minded political allies as they are in Wisconsin.

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