I was right as I have diaired before that Kelly Reindfleisch would try to delay her scheduled trial.
A bid to delay the Oct. 15 trial of a former top aide to Gov. Scott Walker was denied Monday by Circuit Court Judge David Hansher.
Kelly M. Rindfleisch had sought the delay while the state Appeals Court considers her bid to suppress email evidence in the case. Her lawyer, Franklyn Gimbel, has argued that personal emails from Rindfleisch's Google and Yahoo accounts obtained by prosecutors violated her privacy rights. Hansher rejected that argument earlier.
Reindfleisch,, former top aide to Scott Walker when he was the Milwaukee County Executive and a previous aide to Republicans in our State Legislature during the infamous Caucus Scandal (she was given an immunity deal at that tie in return for her cooperation with prosecutors), is facing 4 felony counts of misconduct in office. She is accused of doing political work while employed in the Milwaukee County Executives (the same activities that were prosecuted during the Caucus Scandal in the 1990s).
The other John Doe defendants have successfully moved their trials until after the November elections to avoid the political stink affecting Republican candidates. I predicted that Reindfleisch would do the same.
She did and was soundly rejected.
Her trial is scheduled to begin Octoer 15.
In addition to Kelly Reindfleisch being in a bit of a pickle (she can't say she didn't know that what she was doing was illegal because of the previous prosecutions during the Caucus Scandal), this will be the first trial in which evidence of the John Doe, like those emails, will be front and center and subject to under oath testimony. Scott Walker is on the list of 35 witnesses that may be called by the prosecution.
The trial will address the extent of the political activity that went on inside a taxpayer funded government office while employees were supposed to be doing work for the taxpayers. The most important question, in my very humble opinion, is how all of this could be going on in Scott Walkers Milwaukee County Office, just feet from his desk, without him knowing about it (he continues to proclaim his ignorance of these activities).
If you need a quick refresher on the John Doe Probe, I recommend this site run by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. It's not updated regularly, but will bring you the basics.
Here are the trial dates as of now:
October 8, 2012: Start of the trial for Kevin Kavanaugh
October 15, 2012: Start of the trial for Kelly Reindfleisch.
November 21, 2012: Sentencing for Darlene Wink (plea bargain/cooperating). This date was delayed at the request of prosecutors to ensure continuing cooperation.
December, 2012: Start of the trial for Tim Russell