It doesn’t matter what they thought. What matters is what is truth – and what they can prove. Clearly, they couldn’t prove their case and didn’t even try to prosecute him. I suspect that’s because the truth is that Walker didn’t do anything illegal. But there’s another concerning aspect of this:
Prosecutors believed Gov. Scott Walker committed a felony when he was Milwaukee County Executive for his role in the rejection of a lease extension for county office space, a Wednesday court filing shows.
Walker, who is seeking the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, was never charged with a crime, and has long said he was never a target of the secret 2011 John Doe investigation into his county office.
On Wednesday, prosecutors filed into the court record a 2011 request for a search warrant that was part of the investigation. The filing in federal court came in response to a lawsuit brought against the prosecutors, by Walker aide Cindy Archer, who also was under investigation.
They wrote in the search warrant request that there was probable cause to believe Walker, Friends of Scott Walker campaign treasurer John Hiller and real estate broker Andrew Jensen violated state public office misconduct laws in 2010.
None of them, or Archer, were charged.
Doesn’t this all demonstrate the farce of the John Doe process? The purported purpose of giving prosecutors all of the secret powers of the John Doe protections is so that they can investigate people without damaging their lives and reputations should the prosecutors not find any wrongdoing. But throughout both John Doe investigations around Walker, information leaked like crazy and documents are still being released even though the investigation has been closed for years. If there isn’t going to be any secrecy for the targets anyway, then what is the point of the John Doe laws in the first place?
I’ll go back to what I said years ago… the John Doe laws are an unconstitutional abomination. They should be tossed into the garbage heap and let the normal rules of probable cause and due process apply.
Walker and Hiller and Jensen were not prosecuted because they never finalized the real estate deal. The county chose a different option to house the Dept of Aging. A crime wasn’t committed therefor no one could be charged. But e-mails show the three individuals were in the process of an illegal action but they never actually pulled the trigger on the deal. However the fact that 6 Walker aides were convicted of illegal actions sure doesn’t reflect poorly on the Doe process. Plus we now have a letter from Archer offering to outline criminal activity that she was aware of that came from the Doe process. Finally if the U S Supreme Court allows the Doe process to continue criminal charges might result as the process was halted in mid-stram by bogis claims by Archer that she was a victim of over zealous investigators using gestapo techniques which the audio recording does not support. If Walker and company are innocent the Doe process will estsablish that and once again no charges will be filed. Perhaps a more open and transparent way would be for those under investigation to agree to let the Doe records be open to the public with no charges and let the Court of public opinion rule!
Your argument against the John Doe process fails, and it cannot be for ignorance of the source of the leaks, since you well know that the leaks came from the pro-Walker side. (And now owing to Walker top Cindy Archer, because she initiated the court case that required the most recent release of this information, nothing to do with the John Doe process — so just how many traditions and laws that we have do you want to change and traduce?)
Never have leaks come from the prosecutorial side or others internal to the process. So, the process is not the problem, and the argument ought to be to enforce the secrecy of the process. Charge O’Keeffe, the leaker.