Our readers know that Democratic prosecutors in Wisconsin tried to criminalize the political speech of Governor Scott Walker’s allies, but it turns out their ambitions didn’t stop at the state line. New evidence shows that John Doe investigators were trawling the files they collected via subpoenas and search warrants for information on national conservatives.
The documents are under seal in a state court case, Eric O’Keefe and Wisconsin Club for Growth v. Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB), but two sources have read them to us. The lawsuit is a complaint against the GAB, the state agency that worked with Milwaukee prosecutors on the John Doe that used campaign-finance laws to trample the First Amendment.
We’ve tried to expose this illegal harassment since the autumn of 2013, when early morning home raids and subpoenas hit conservative groups across the state. From that investigation and a previous John Doe whose documents were transferred into the new investigation, prosecutors and the GAB collected millions of documents, including personal files, emails and bank statements.
The John Doe team searched the digital cache for information related to their now-discredited theory of campaign-finance coordination, but they didn’t stop there. The Milwaukee District Attorney’s office, run by Democrat John Chisholm, sent GAB staff a spreadsheet of search terms that included prominent national conservatives.
The spreadsheet includes the names and personal email addresses of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, political strategist and Journal contributor Karl Rove, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Republican Party chief Reince Priebus and Fox News host Sean Hannity.
The list also includes search terms for such non-scandalous words as “coordination plan” and “message.” The government snoops created ideological search concepts like “big union bosses” and “big government,” as if such phrases suggest some law-breaking intent. Recall that when the IRS targeted conservative groups for special vetting, it created a “Be On the Lookout” list of key words such as “patriot” and “tea party.”
The John Doe documents don’t say why these national figures were targeted, though we assume they were also thought to be allies of Mr. Walker. From documents released late last year we know prosecutors discussed looking into Mr. Hannity and Milwaukee radio host Charlie Sykes for “potential equal time violations.”
Through rounds of search warrants and searches of Internet service providers, the prosecutors expanded their writ to pursue the liberal hobbyhorse of “dark money” in elections. In a memo describing their theory of a “scheme” to get around campaign-finance limits, the D.A.’s office refers derisively to “so-called social welfare organization(s)” which “represent a huge loophole to traditional regulation of political advertising.”
In an August 10, 2012 petition to the Circuit Court in Milwaukee County to open the John Doe into conservative groups, Assistant District Attorney David Robles wrote, “I anticipate subpoenaing Wisconsin state officials, Wisconsin senate candidates, campaign contributors, and contributors to ‘501(c)(4)’ organizations during the course of the investigation to identify the purpose of the contributions.”
At least one of the subsequent subpoenas that we’ve seen asked for “fundraising information and the identity of persons contributing to the corporation.” In other words: Give up the names of your donors. The scope of these searches is breathtaking and shows how easily the liberal obsession with campaign “coordination” turns into partisan score-settling. No wonder the Wisconsin Supreme Court shut the probe down as unconstitutional earlier this year.
We doubt these national political figures knew their names were on the search list. But then vast numbers of documents were seized from dozens of individuals and organizations that have never been charged with a crime. Many caught in this dragnet are still unaware that their emails and personal data are held by state law enforcement. If Republican office-holders had tried something like this, liberals would be shouting about a vast domestic spying operation.
Last week Wisconsin’s legislature approved a John Doe reform bill on a party-line vote and Mr. Walker signed it on Friday. The legislation restricts John Doe probes, which require secrecy from targets and witnesses, mostly for serious felonies and violent crimes. Using it for standard political investigations will be barred.
That’s a start, but the Milwaukee prosecutors and liberal activists at the GAB abused their authority for partisan purposes. The courts need to hold them accountable.
