The more we hear about how the John Doe investigation went, the more we realize just how abusive and out of control the whole thing was.

Prominent Republican political strategist R.J. Johnson told a Wall Street Journal editorial writer he was in an airplane when word reached him that his 16-year-old son had awakened in their home to find six law enforcement officers executing a search warrant.

“He was told he couldn’t move, that he couldn’t call a lawyer, that he couldn’t call his parents,” Johnson told the newspaper. “He was a minor and he was isolated by law enforcement.”

[…]

At the end of the session, Johnson said, Milwaukee Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf asked him: “‘Is there any reason at the end of the campaign you deleted all of your emails?’ So I knew then I had been tracked all the way through, that they had been reading my emails.” But Johnson said he was surprised when he learned his house was searched as part of the second investigation.

The leader of the state’s business lobby said in the article that prosecutors obtained its records with a subpoena, not a search warrant. Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce hired consultants to copy large quantities of digital information for prosecutors, president and CEO Kurt Bauer said.

“I think part of the goal was to chill our fundraising and keep us off the airwaves,” Bauer said. “So the money and time we had to spend defending ourselves was money and time that we couldn’t spend toward issue advocacy.”