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Federal court should review John Doe

Reader says justices should have recused themselves

The John Doe investigation into possible criminal activity by Gov. Scott Walker should go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Matt Rothschild, with the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, argues that the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision to dismiss the probe has “legalized coordination between candidates and outside groups” during elections.

He says special prosecutor Francis Schmitz should appeal this decision.

The four conservative justices who ruled against Schmitz were clearly biased and should have recused themselves, in large part because they received a combined $8 million in campaign donations from three of the outside groups that were being investigated.

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce gave $500,000 in support of Justice Patience Roggensack, $1.1 million to Justice David Prosser, $1.76 million to Justice Michael Gableman and $2.2 million to Justice Annette Ziegler.

Wisconsin Club for Growth gave $350,000 to Roggensack, $400,000 to Ziegler, $500,000 to Gableman, and $500,000 Prosser.

Citizens For a Strong America spent about $1 million supporting Prossers 2011 re-election campaign against JoAnne Kloppenburg.

Prosser won that race by 7,000 votes after Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, who had been on Prosser’s staff for 13 years while he was in the state Assembly, mysteriously discovered 14,315 from Brookfield three days after the election. This was the same Nicholaus who was granted immunity in 2001 to testify about her role as a computer analyst during the Republican caucus scandal.

If they had any integrity, the judges who received more than $8 million from Scott Walker’s generous financial supporters should have recused themselves from the case.

But this is Wisconsin in the Scott Walker era, where everything is open for business.

George Lorenz
Waupaca

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