It's now become apparent that Scott Walker really is trying to have it both ways. He claims in public he's not going to get into the details of the first John Doe case that investigated his Milwaukee County staff's political activity on public time and his involvement in an illegal, secret email system. But in private he apparently is paying big bucks to powerful attorneys who are challenging the second, on-going Doe investigation. You see, he's been cleared and he's not been cleared! Simple, huh?
One supposes Walker really doesn't need to read all those tens of thousands of revealed emails himself, because he's got pricey lawyers doing it for him. What did they find and how have they advised him? And is the case against Walker really closed, or isn't it? Well, the public Walker suggests you Wisconsin citizens pay no attention to what's going on behind closed doors, okay? But from what we can tell, the private Walker is paying very, very close attention, himself.
Compare the two quite antagonistic Walker stances, below.
1. THE PUBLIC WALKER, in the wake of the legally troubling and politically embarrrassing Rindfleisch email releases:
"The only comment I am going to say about all of this, because I am not going through 27,000 pages of stuff, is that a Democratic district attorney looked at all that information and interviews ... . You had a Democratic district attorney spend almost three years looking at every single one of those communications ... and closed the case." [quoted widely]
2. THE PRIVATE WALKER, as revealed in court filings:
Steven Biskupic, an attorney who has represented Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign, was named in a court order Thursday as an attorney in a case challenging the ongoing secret investigation into possible illegal campaigning during the recalls against Walker and others in 2011 and 2012... .
A message left with Friends of Scott Walker asking whether the governor’s campaign was one of the eight unnamed respondents challenging the probe was not immediately returned... .
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Walker’s campaign, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the Wisconsin Club for Growth, and Citizens for a Strong America, their officers and directors had been subpoenaed... .
In its last campaign-finance statement, Friends of Scott Walker reported paying Biskupic’s firm $86,000 in legal fees. Asked earlier this month whether the payments were related to the John Doe probe, the governor responded, “I’m not getting into the details of it.” [February 28, 2014 story in the Wisconsin State Journal]
One thing you should know is that, in general, attorneys in cases of this sort do not represent more than one party, because of possible conflicts of interest. After all, if one attorney represented both Walker and, say, the Club For Growth, that would almost be like an admission that he and they had common and overlapping interests, which is the very possibility that triggered the investigation. Thus, it's unliikely Biskupic is representing anyone besides Walker in the Doe case.
That's just our supposition, of course, but given Walker's public stance -- he's not talking, except to insist there's nothing to talk about -- we have no other recourse but to suppose. Oh, for open government and transparent politicians who don't scheme behind our backs. As a traditional Wisconsin farm kid might put it: Ollie ollie oxen free, governor!