On today’s BradCast, the Wisconsin Supreme Court drops the next amazing shoe in the mindblowing case against the “John Doe” criminal probe into campaign improprieties by Gov. Scott Walker and his Koch Brothers-funded rightwing crony organizations during the 2012 recall elections in the state. (Audio link posted below.)
I’m joined once again by Brendan Fischer of the Center for Media and Democracy today to discuss the unprecedented move by the state’s high court that has, in effect, resulted in the firing of the Republican special investigator in charge of the probe looking at illegal campaign coordination between those powerful “dark money” groups and the controversial Republican Governor.
“The Wisconsin Supreme Court has a four justice majority,” Fischer explains in recounting this remarkable, and under-reported turn of events. “And that four justice majority was elected to the bench with $10 million dollars in spending from the same groups under investigation. The same groups that Walker was accused of coordinating with. The same groups that were party to the case. And the same groups that would be affected by an adverse ruling by a decision that what they did was illegal.”
“Despite these conflicts of interests, these justices declined to recuse. They shut down the investigation, rewrote the law to benefit their biggest donors, and then the Special Prosecutor asked the Court to reconsider its investigation.”
In response to that Motion to Reconsider, Fischer tells me, the Court’s bought and paid for majority went far beyond what anybody might have imagined they would do. “Not only did they dismiss the Motion to Reconsider, they rewrote their July decision to say, ‘you as Special Prosecutor can no longer be involved in this case.’ Which means that he would be unable to appeal up to the U.S. Supreme Court and challenge the conflicts of interest on the WI Supreme Court.”
The result, as both Fischer and the Court’s minority note, is that we are now in wholly unprecedented territory for this case in the Badger State and for illegal campaign finance and coordination in Wisconsin and, potentially, the rest of the nation as the Right has been paying close attention to this case and spending a lot of money for the results they now seem to have achieved.
Please listen to the full amazing interview below!
Also on today’s BradCast: Corporate media finally begin to notice the mess they’ve helped foster in this country over the past decade (and more) and some good news, for a very welcome change, in our latest Green News Report as the UN climate summit in Paris (COP21) reaches crunch time…
Download MP3 or listen to complete show online below…
[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_BrendanFischer_WIJohnDoeSupremeCourt_120915.mp3]
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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Don’t get mad, get Brad.
Although I gotta admit, Scott Walker is untouchable, considering all those protests of 100,000+ that i joined in Madison for his well-deserved recall….the guy is invincible!…just like Mussolini….except for that one time at the very end, when the dictator’s defiled corpse with wide open eyes was dragged through the streets to the ecstatic cheers of his rebellious citizenry….it’s funny really, how his kind never see it coming….i do…
http://www.marvinjones.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-wizard-of-odds.htmlSome of us uphold the Constitution of the United States and others seem to be going back to a variation of the divine right of kings. Or is this just part of the continuing effort to rewrite the classical definition of chutzpah?
Please note that Wisconsin fits a pattern–the subversion of the judiciary, which, under our system, must be an independent branch. Remember Kansas?
“We are”–wink, wink, nudge, nudge–“conservatives, strict constructionists.”
http://www.marvinjones.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-wizard-of-odds.html
A naked power grab by the kochtopus? An executive who has a special prosecutor fired? A rising mountain of evidence with a corresponding steaming pile of coverup? Where oh where are the congressional investigations, the intrepid reporters, the angry mobs? Let me get my popcorn.
Seriously. Either someone has to do the adult thing and stop this guy, or else we admit, once and for all, that our democracy is dead.