An effort to investigate Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s political fundraising during his 2012 recall election cost Badger State voters $1.1 million, recently released court documents show. The investigation was halted last year after a judge determined that the activities alleged in the probe were not in fact illegal.
The figures may grow higher. At least seven lawsuits relating to the “John Doe” probe, a secret investigative procedure available to state prosecutors, have been filed and litigation remains ongoing, reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Patrick Marley. The Wisconsin Club for Growth, one of the targets of the probe, has appealed for a dismissal of its lawsuit to the Supreme Court.
The state will have to foot the bill for all it. In a supremely ironic turn, the governor’s office is also responsible for hiring the attorneys that will defend the prosecutors from the lawsuits relating to their probe of Walker’s fundraising.
The “John Doe” probe began in 2012 when Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and special prosecutor Francis Schmitz began to investigate alleged illegal fundraising coordination by Walker’s recall campaign and conservative groups that supported him.
Those groups have derided the probe as a partisan witch-hunt. In January 2014, a judge quashed the subpoenas issued as part of the investigation, stating that they “do not show probable cause that the moving parties committed any violations of the campaign finance laws.”
It was the second “John Doe” probe Walker has faced. The first one was launched in 2010 when Walker, then Milwaukee County executive, alerted the district attorney to apparent misappropriation by individuals in his office of funds intended for a veterans’ program. The probe resulted in the convictions of three staffers and closed in March 2013. Walker was never implicated.
