Archive for the ‘Governor Scott Walker’ Category

INTIMIDATION BY THE JOHN DOE INVESTIGATORS

Friday, January 5th, 2018

 

This is the second article that has been sent out regarding Wisconsin’s infamous John Doe investigation where conservatives were targeted for their support for Governor Scott Walker .  The conservatives  who were being investigated were warned not to discuss this investigation with anyone as a gag order was placed on them.  If they did, they would be facing a jail sentence.
 What happened to free speech in this country?   This could happen to any of us.     Thanks to Luonne Dumak of Wisconsin for sharing this article.  Nancy

 RIGHTWISCONSIN.COM

IS THIS JUSTICE? DEBORAH JORDAHL AND HER FAMILY LIVED THE REAL JOHN DOE

Is This Justice? Deborah Jordahl And Her Family Lived The Real John Doe

 

MacIver News Service

By M.D. Kittle

MADISON, Wis. – Deborah Jordahl and her family felt like they woke up in another country in the predawn hours of Oct. 3, 2013.

That’s when law enforcement officials, directed by the prosecutors of Wisconsin’s infamous John Doe investigation, showed up with warrants and raided the homes of several Wisconsin conservatives – including the one in Jordahl’s middle-class Middleton neighborhood.

. Deborah JordahlIt certainly didn’t feel like America.

“It was surreal,” Jordahl recently told MacIver News Service on the Jay Weber Show, on NewsTalk 1130 WISN in Milwaukee.

“I woke up to some sounds in the yard. It was still dark out. The door bell rang. My husband and I were met by an armed deputy sheriff who told us she had a warrant to search the house. Wouldn’t say why,” recalled Jordahl, one of scores of right-of-center activists and other conservatives swept up in the campaign finance probe.

“They would not let me wake my children by myself. They followed me into their rooms. My children, at the time, were 15 and 17, and they woke up to an armed deputy standing over their bed,” Jordahl continued.

She found out months later that her son – 17 at the time of the raid – feared that his father had died, “because why else would there be people crawling around” the house at that hour of the morning. “I couldn’t really say anything. I had to keep them moving. I was terrified,” Jordahl said.

Law enforcement corralled this family of four into their living room. For the next few hours these John Doe raiders searched every closet, every drawer, in every room of the house. Then they went through the basement, then the garage, and the Jordahls’ vehicles. They hauled out boxes of paper and all kinds of electronic equipment.

Jordahl, a successful political consultant who, alongside her partner R.J. Johnson had advised Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign, was the target named on the search warrant. But that didn’t stop deputies and John Doe agents from rooting through her husband’s, daughter’s and son’s possessions – their computers, their cellphones, hard drives, more.

PLEASE CLICK ON THE ABOVE LINK TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

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WISCONSIN, THE SURVEILLANCE STATE

Thursday, December 28th, 2017

 

This information regarding intimidation and harassment by the Left  of Wisconsin conservatives who supported Governor Scott Walker has received very little media coverage.  Please share with your email lists and let’s let a little sunshine in.  It has been said that sunshine is the best disinfectant !   Nancy
THE WEEKLY STANDARD

Wisconsin, the Surveillance State

The ‘John Doe’ scandal widens.
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:  John Doe proceedings are initiated by a judge to see if a crime has been committed; investigators and suspects are prohibited from discussing the case. The Wisconsin law, dating to 1889, was intended to protect the identities of those being investigated. Yet the inquiries into Walker and his supporters achieved the exact opposite effect. While confidential details about Republicans leaked freely to the media, those under investigation were barred from defending themselves. The gag order against the investigation’s targets prompted U.S. Circuit Court judge Frank Easterbrook to call the John Doe framework “screamingly unconstitutional.”In 2012, the Milwaukee County district attorney asked for a second John Doe probe, into Walker’s gubernatorial campaign. This one gained national notoriety in October 2013, when law enforcement officers began making paramilitary-style, pre-dawn raids on the homes of unsuspecting private citizens. With floodlights trained on the targets’ homes, armed officers threatened to beat doors down with battering rams; rifled through rooms; and seized phones, computers, and bank records without allowing the subjects to contact their attorneys. Groggy families awakened to the sound of police boots running through their homes were told that they could not tell anyone what had happened.

Their crime? Supporting conservative causes in Wisconsin.


On May 23, the Wisconsin Department of Justice (WisDOJ) received a call from the state’s ethics board. An employee rummaging around in the basement of the building had found a filing cabinet full of material from the now-defunct “John Doe” investigations into the state’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, and his supporters.

WisDOJ was investigating the illegal 2016 leak to the Guardian of confidential details from the investigations, and in January, it had ordered that all John Doe records be turned over immediately. Yet this unexpected trove appeared four months later. The new evidence included three hard drives, 10 optical disk drives, a thumb drive, and paper files, which contained nearly 500,000 private emails and text messages collected from Republican political aides and staffers between 2009 and 2012. Among the millions of pages were discussions of the most personal nature—Wisconsin GOP staffers talking with family members about illness, helping friends through precarious relationships, and discussing money troubles with their spouses. Not knowing government bureaucrats were monitoring their discussions, some saved sensitive passwords in Gmail accounts; others sent pictures of themselves trying on clothes to friends and asked how they looked. Many of these messages were filed in a folder marked “opposition research.”

On December 6, the WisDOJ released a 91-page report on the leak, and what it shows is that Wisconsin public officials set up what amounts to a political spying operation.

The John Doe investigations have been a fixture of Wisconsin politics and courts for more than half a decade. Originating in 2010 with a request from Milwaukee County executive Scott Walker—who was running for governor—to investigate some missing money in his own office, they metastasized into a series of wide-ranging witch hunts used to harass and intimidate conservatives. In both the 2012 recall election to unseat Walker and the 2014 gubernatorial race, Democrats frequently cited the investigations as evidence of his “corruption.”

John Doe proceedings are initiated by a judge to see if a crime has been committed; investigators and suspects are prohibited from discussing the case. The Wisconsin law, dating to 1889, was intended to protect the identities of those being investigated. Yet the inquiries into Walker and his supporters achieved the exact opposite effect. While confidential details about Republicans leaked freely to the media, those under investigation were barred from defending themselves. The gag order against the investigation’s targets prompted U.S. Circuit Court judge Frank Easterbrook to call the John Doe framework “screamingly unconstitutional.”

In 2012, the Milwaukee County district attorney asked for a second John Doe probe, into Walker’s gubernatorial campaign. This one gained national notoriety in October 2013, when law enforcement officers began making paramilitary-style, pre-dawn raids on the homes of unsuspecting private citizens. With floodlights trained on the targets’ homes, armed officers threatened to beat doors down with battering rams; rifled through rooms; and seized phones, computers, and bank records without allowing the subjects to contact their attorneys. Groggy families awakened to the sound of police boots running through their homes were told that they could not tell anyone what had happened.

Their crime? Supporting conservative causes in Wisconsin.

The legal basis for the second investigation was specious as prosecutors were accusing Walker of illegally coordinating with third-party groups during the recall elections in 2012. But that interpretation of state law relied on an outdated reading of election law—which had been overturned by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. In January 2014, Judge Gregory Peterson effectively shut the second investigation down, noting that the conservative groups were engaged in constitutionally protected speech. In July 2015, the Wisconsin State Supreme Court ended the investigation for good and ordered that all the evidence be destroyed or returned to its owners.

It was only after this court order that dozens of conservative activists learned that three years’ worth of their private email and text messages had been seized. With the release of the WisDOJ report, the public found out that this mountain of intimate, private correspondence had been sitting for years in an unsecured filing cabinet in the basement of what used to be the offices of the Government Accountability Board (GAB), which enforced the state’s ethics and elections laws until 2015, when it was replaced by two separate watchdogs. Much of this material had been reviewed and filed by GAB staff when they began the secret investigation that WisDOJ calls “John Doe III.”

The existence of this third investigation came as a complete surprise to the state’s attorney general when he learned of it last year. WisDOJ agents surmised it was instigated by staff at the GAB when they had caught wind of “illegal” campaigning by legislative staff during the 2012 recall elections that swept Wisconsin in the wake of Scott Walker’s controversial union reforms.

It was many of these staffers whose private emails and chats showed up in the basement. Investigators identified 35 campaign workers whose personal accounts had been obtained by search warrant, and in its report, WisDOJ said it was “deeply concerned by what appears to have been the weaponizing of GAB by partisans in furtherance of political goals.” The list of people subjected to the search includes not just people who worked on the 2012 recall campaigns, but also Republican Party of Wisconsin staffers and Scott Walker aides. One former Senate aide says he had spent two weeks in Wisconsin’s North Woods in 2012 volunteering for a Republican candidate, and for this innocuous act, three years of his emails were seized.

Republican state senator Leah Vukmir, who will be running for the U.S. Senate in 2018, was also subject to the spying. WisDOJ found files with more than 150 emails between Vukmir and her daughter—many of which contained “private medical information and other highly personal information.” In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on December 10, an outraged Vukmir announced she was looking into her legal options for the violation of her privacy. “This was criminal behavior, and the individuals involved ought to see jail time,” she wrote. Vukmir says that despite the court order, she was never notified that her emails had been seized.

As Vukmir’s daughter’s case demonstrates, it wasn’t simply the targets of the investigation whose personal information ended up before the leering eyes of the GAB staff. All those who emailed one of the subjects on the list were unwittingly spilling their personal secrets to government bureaucrats, whether they had any connection to the ill-fated investigation or not.

WisDOJ investigators never conclusively identified where the leak to the Guardian came from, but the report noted that the only place where all the relevant documents were ever held all together was a portable hard drive belonging to a GAB investigator named Shane Falk. According to the same report, the file cabinet holding all the seized personal emails and documents was adorned by Post-it notes suggesting that Falk was also its owner.

A Democratic appointee to the GAB, Falk made the news in 2015 when his zeal to take down Scott Walker was revealed in leaked emails. In an email to prosecutors in November 2013, Falk wrote that the alleged coordination between Walker’s campaign and conservative groups was a “bastardization of politics” and that the state was being run “by corporations and billionaires.” According to emails released by WisDOJ, Falk frequently harangued other John Doe prosecutors for not going after Walker vigorously enough and questioned their knowledge of campaign finance law. Ironically, it was Falk’s legal reasoning that was repeatedly rejected in court after court.

In interviews since the WisDOJ report was released, Falk has said he doesn’t know anything about the leak and that he doesn’t know how the personal emails obtained by GAB came to be marked “opposition research.” In its report, WisDOJ called the leak a crime, but concluded that it couldn’t identify who had made it—so instead of criminal charges, Wisconsin attorney general Brad Schimel forwarded contempt of court charges against Falk and eight other GAB investigators for their reckless handling of records.

Those records include numerous details of state Republicans’ private lives, collected with little probable cause in the course of a bogus investigation. To date, WisDOJ agents have not been able to locate Falk’s external hard drive, which mysteriously went missing after he resigned from the board.

 

 

Christian Schneider is a columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

(more…)

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PHOTOS – REPUBLICAN CONVENTION 2016 – DAY 3

Friday, July 29th, 2016

 

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Governor Mike Pense of Indiana

Governor Mike Pence of Indiana

Mike Pence and family  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3pW27TMgr4

Mike Pence and family www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3pW27TMgr4%5B/caption%5D

Governor Mike Pense of Indiana www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3pW27TMgr4

 

[caption id="attachment_17656" align="alignnone" width="448"]Donald Trump and Mike Pense Donald Trump and Mike Pence

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Mike Pence and family

Mike Pence and family

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDhqM9ZnVmI

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDhqM9ZnVmI%5B/caption%5D

[caption id="attachment_17660" align="alignnone" width="448"]Senator Marco Rubio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjwFw0WfB-I Senator Marco Rubio
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjwFw0WfB-I%5B/caption%5D

[caption id="attachment_17661" align="alignnone" width="448"]Laura Ingraham  ********** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqNhDVcvrsg (She definitely brought down the house with this one ! )  Laura Ingraham **********
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqNhDVcvrsg
(She definitely brought down the house with this one ! )

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsz61dalaHY

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsz61dalaHY%5B/caption%5D

[caption id="attachment_17664" align="alignnone" width="448"]Florida Governor Rick Scott https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uINk3fZ2cfY Florida Governor Rick Scott
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uINk3fZ2cfY%5B/caption%5D

[caption id="attachment_17665" align="alignnone" width="448"]Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rugledge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7Z1OOvBDPs Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rugledge
www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7Z1OOvBDPs%5B/caption%5D

[caption id="attachment_17666" align="alignnone" width="372"]Colonel Eileen Collins, Ret, Former Commander, U.S. Space Shuttle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36lvD-EEpZg Colonel Eileen Collins, Ret, Former Commander, U.S. Space Shuttle
www.youtube.com/watch?v=36lvD-EEpZg%5B/caption%5D

[caption id="attachment_17667" align="alignnone" width="448"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OoMNrtZG0E www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OoMNrtZG0E%5B/caption%5D

[caption id="attachment_17668" align="alignnone" width="448"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgmvxfsue1k www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgmvxfsue1k%5B/caption%5D

[caption id="attachment_17669" align="alignnone" width="448"]Darrell Scott, Senior Pastor, New Spirit Revival Center Ministries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2FquR7XaaQ Darrell Scott, Senior Pastor, New Spirit Revival Center Ministries
www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2FquR7XaaQ%5B/caption%5D

[caption id="attachment_17670" align="alignnone" width="345"]Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin

Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina

Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina

Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina

Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina

Sandra Henson of Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Sandra Henson of Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Nick Vaughan of North Carolina

Nick Vaughan of North Carolina

From the left:  Ted Hicks and Rod Chaney of North Carolina

From the left: Ted Hicks and Rod Chaney of North Carolina

From the left:  Zan Bunn,  President, North Carolina Federation  of Republican Women,  and Linda Devore, a delegate from Fayetteville , North Carolina

From the left: Zan Bunn, President, North Carolina Federation
of Republican Women,
and Linda Devore, a delegate from Fayetteville , North Carolina

From the left:  Nancy Clark, Conservative Women's Forum and Linda Arnold, National Federation of Republican Women, Regent Chair

From the left: Nancy Clark, Conservative Women’s Forum and Linda Arnold, National Federation of Republican Women, Regent Chair

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Martha Jenkins and Doug Isley

Martha Jenkins and Doug Isley

 

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VIDEOS – FULL SPEECHES FROM CPAC 2015

Saturday, February 28th, 2015

 

VIDEOS – FULL SPEECHES OF CPAC SPEAKERS 2015 
  
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VIDEO – GOV. SCOTT WALKER’S SPEECH IN IOWA – JANUARY 2015

Thursday, February 5th, 2015

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SCOTT WALKER SHOWS PROMISE HEADING INTO 2016

Tuesday, January 13th, 2015

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Best-Positioned Rival to Jeb Bush May Not Be the Best Known

Scott Walker Shows Promise Heading Into 2016

By Nate Cohn

Jeb Bush had a good month. He struck first in the invisible primary — the behind-the-scenes competition for the support of donors, officials and operatives. And for all of the talk about the depth of the Republican field, the opposition to Mr. Bush remains unclear and underwhelming.

That is in part because many of the high-profile potential Republican contenders — like Ted Cruz, Chris Christie and Rand Paul — are factional and flawed candidates with tough routes to the party’s nomination.

Nonetheless, there will be demand for an alternative to Mr. Bush, even from within the so-called Republican establishment. Since Friday, attention has focused on Mitt Romney, who said in a meeting of top advisers and donors that he was considering a third run.

But the more compelling challenger may be Scott Walker, the battle-hardened governor of Wisconsin. He has made moves toward running, and on paper, he’s the type of candidate who should deeply concern Mr. Bush.

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VIDEO – GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER – CPAC 2014

Monday, March 10th, 2014

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VIDEO – SCOTT WALKER INTERVIEWED RE UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS

Tuesday, January 7th, 2014

 

VIDEO  – CNN – SCOTT WALKER INTERVIEWED ON UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS – MANY GOOD IDEAS FROM A VERY EFFECTIVE GOVERNOR

 

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WALL STREET JOURNAL ARTICLES

Wednesday, November 27th, 2013

 

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304465604579222110598111076?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories –  _0bama Administration Proposes New Curbs on Campaigning by tax exempt groups 

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303985504579206210388287976?mod=ITP_opinion_0  –  Scott Walker – How to Win the Obama-Walker Voters

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303281504579219931479934854?mod=ITP_opinion_0  Worse than Munich  – In 1938, Chamberlain bought time to rearm.  In 2013, Obama gives Iran time to go nuclear   by Bret Stephens

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303653004579213841747969928?mod=ITP_opinion_0  –  The Next ObamaCare Mirage  -The new line is that the new healthcare law will save money.  That’s also not true

online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304791704579212212826877986?mod=ITP_opinion_0  –  Ignore Karzai and Press On  –  Uncertain signals from the Obama administration have sapped Afghans’ confidence in the future

 

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THE BROWN SHIRTS OF WISCONSIN

Sunday, November 17th, 2013

 

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WISCONSIN POLITICAL SPEECH RAID
Subpoenas hit allies of Scott Walker  as his reelection campaign looms

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:  Mr. O’Keefe says he received his subpoena in early October. He adds that at least three of the targets had their homes raided at dawn, with law-enforcement officers turning over belongings to seize computers and files…... The subpoena demand for the names of donors to nonprofit groups that aren’t legally required to disclose them is especially troubling. Readers may recall that the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent the tax-exempt applications of several conservative groups to the ProPublica news website in 2012….

Perhaps the probe will turn up some nefarious activity that warrants this subpoena monsoon and home raids. But in the meantime the effect is to limit political speech by intimidating these groups from participating in the 2014 campaign. Stifling allies of Mr. Walker would be an enormous in-kind contribution to Democrats. Even if no charges are filed, the subpoenas will have served as a form of speech suppression.

Mr. O’Keefe told us that the flurry of subpoenas “froze my communications and frightened many allies and vendors of the pro-taxpayer political movement in Wisconsin and across the country.” Even if no one is ever convicted of a crime, he says, “the process is the punishment.”

Americans learned in the IRS political targeting scandal that government enforcement power can be used to stifle political speech. Something similar may be unfolding in Wisconsin, where a special prosecutor is targeting conservative groups that participated in the battle over Governor Scott Walker’s union reforms.

In recent weeks, special prosecutor Francis Schmitz has hit dozens of conservative groups with subpoenas demanding documents related to the 2011 and 2012 campaigns to recall Governor Walker and state legislative leaders.

Copies of two subpoenas we’ve seen demand “all memoranda, email . . . correspondence, and communications” both internally and between the subpoena target and some 29 conservative groups, including Wisconsin and national nonprofits, political vendors and party committees. The groups include the League of American Voters, Wisconsin Family Action, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Americans for Prosperity—Wisconsin, American Crossroads, the Republican Governors Association, Friends of Scott Walker and the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Associated Press

One subpoena also demands “all records of income received, including fundraising information and the identity of persons contributing to the corporation.” In other words, tell us who your donors are. (more…)

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