He's not worried. He's got Wisconsin media in one of his pockets and loads of Koch money in the other.
We'll see the first
release of some documents in the original John Doe Probe in Wisconsin sometime next month.
Remember when 6 aides and associates of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R-It's Never My Fault) were charged and convicted in the original John Doe Probe? Most of those documents remained under seal until top Walker aide, Kelly Rindfleisch, decided to appeal her plea bargained conviction. The judge overseeing that appeal made all of the documents in her case open to the public.
These were documents that SHOULD have been part of the public record were it not for a secret router and private email accounts deliberately used to avoid archiving. Government activities, by law, are to be open to the public, available, and in government hands.
However, Walkers Milwaukee County staff weren't doing a whole lot of public work on the taxpayer dime. They were campaigning, fundraising, and blogging pro-Walker comments under phony names on news web sites. Yeah, illegal stuff they wanted to hide. So they installed a secret router and used personal computers to hide what they were doing.
A media firestorm followed the release of 27,000 pages of documents in the Rindfleisch appeal. Racist and other shocking emails that were traded between Walkers staff were exposed to the public for the first time including attempts to keep information about the death of a teenager in a County owned parking structure out of the news because of potential damage to Walkers campaign for Governor. There was plenty of evidence, too, that Walkers Gubernatorial campaign staff was dictating orders to his taxpayer funded County staff - basically running the government out of Walkers campaign office. Walkers involvement was undeniable as a few of his emails became public.
National news broadcast each sensational revelation that was exposed in the documents day after day. Walker went deeper into hiding (he doesn't hold press conferences, doesn't publish his schedule, and is generally only available for interviews on RW talk shows and Fox News).
And then came documents unsealed from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals which will decide whether or not to overturn Federal Judge (and frequent flyer to Koch sponsored events) Randa's decision to halt John Doe II. Those documents, unsealed last month, put Walker in the middle of a "criminal scheme" to circumvent campaign finance laws.
Another media firestorm erupted as that made national news, as well.
A month or 2 ago, the judge overseeing the John Doe unsealed the records for return to Milwaukee County, where they belonged. Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele said he would release the information to the public via Open Records requests, but needed to have the 2 terabytes of information reviewed so personal information could be removed.
The documents the prosecutors had were from the hard drives of those personal computers and could include personal information, family pictures, etc. along with documents that should have been archived had they been created through the Milwaukee County serves. That personal information needs to be removed.
The first batch of documents will be released sometime next month.
The documents come from computers that were seized in a 33-month secret John Doe investigation that resulted in convictions of six aides and associates of Walker. That probe was closed last year, but prosecutors used information from it to start a second investigation, which was halted by a federal judge in May.
Prosecutors have given Abele's office about 500 gigabytes of data — a mountain of material, but a quarter of the two terabytes of data Abele initially believed his office might have to comb through.
The material includes the hard drives of 14 people who worked in Walker's office when he was county executive, as well as the private email accounts of six of those employees, Conway said.
The documents will be released in phases. This will be the first of those releases.
The county has already received records requests from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin State Journal, New York Times, Washington Post and others.
The reason that the documents can't be released in one full batch is obvious: The extent to which Walkers staff went to hide the information from public archiving mixed them with personal documents on private computers. Using personal computers and then deleting the documents (no, nothing is ever gone forever from your computer) made hard drive dumps necessary for prosecutors. The job now is to separate the persons personal information from the information that should have been archived by the County.
But that's OK. The documents are coming out and if they come out once a month, we're that much closer to election day when Walkers name is on the ballot and he is forced to run on his very dismal record.
Drip, drip, drip.
AND EVEN MORE:
Taxpayers in Wisconsin found out last week about Scott Walkers lavish spending on himself.
Today, the head of the Wisconsin Democratic Party has called on Scott Walker to reimburse the statefor some of that extravagance.
“Every governor rightly has security provided by the state, but having the taxpayers foot the bill for Scott Walker to bag campaign cash, hawk his book, vacation in the Bahamas, and promote his presidential ambitions at the RNC (Republican National Convention) is absurd,” Tate said.
...
In an interview last week, Walker defended the use of a state bodyguard for his vacation.
"That's the only personal vacation I've taken since I've been governor," Walker said during a stop in New Berlin on Tuesday. "We don't comment on security. Governors don't historically comment on it."
No Governor has ever used security on a personal vacation and Walkers use of 5 security guards during the Republican National Convention is unprecedented considering the fact that both the FBI and Secret Service provide massive amounts of security for the convention already. He's also taken his massive security detail for 110 out of state trips for personal, political, and campaign including some official trips.
While squeezing everyone else, there seems to be plenty of money to fulfill all of Walkers wishes and help him deal with his paranoia and fear of the public.
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This will be my last diary until after I return from Netroots Nation. I hope to have a safe and pleasant trip and am looking forward to meeting all of you in person for the first time.
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