Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen declined Friday to defend Wisconsin elections officials against a new lawsuit connected to a stalled probe of Gov. Scott Walker and his conservative allies, asserting the officials are misreading a law at the heart of the investigation.
On Thursday, a conservative Milwaukee County group sued prosecutors and election officials involved in the secret John Doe probe, arguing it has a constitutional right to collaborate with candidates. That question is crucial to the investigation, since prosecutors are separately probing whether Walker and the Wisconsin Club for Growth and other conservative organizations illegally coordinated with one another.
In a letter Friday to the head of the Government Accountability Board, a top aide to Van Hollen, a Republican, wrote that the Wisconsin elections agency is advancing "tenuous legal positions."
Dan Lennington, the state's assistant deputy attorney general, wrote to GAB director Kevin Kennedy that state law doesn't prohibit coordination between a candidate and a group running so-called political "issue ads" that stop short of explicitly calling for that candidate's election or his opponent's defeat.
GAB spokesman Reid Magney said Friday that the agency has asked Walker's office to appoint a special counsel to defend the agency. Walker spokeswoman Laurel Patrick said the governor's office would review the request.
The group filing Thursday's suit in federal court in Milwaukee, Citizens for Responsible Government Advocates, has long backed Walker. Its attorneys in the case are the same as those who are representing two of the subjects of the John Doe investigation, the Wisconsin Club for Growth and Eric O'Keefe, one of the club's directors.
The CRG complaint marked the sixth lawsuit filed in connection with the investigation of Republicans launched by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat, and now overseen by special prosecutor Francis Schmitz.
Conservative groups have been fighting the John Doe with wealth and will. In a radio interview Thursday, O'Keefe accused Chisholm and election officials of engaging in "domestic spying" and corruption, saying that the authorities had raided suspects' homes and left them suffering reactions "similar to rape victims"
"We have in Wisconsin a taxpayer-funded domestic spying operation of over three years' duration conducted by the Milwaukee County DA, John Chisholm," O'Keefe told radio host Vicki McKenna.
Those comments haven't drawn a big reaction from the prosecutors whom O'Keefe and the club separately sued in federal court earlier this year _ a lawsuit that was dismissed by a federal appeals court last month.
But O'Keefe's remarks drew a rebuke Friday from Walker's opponent in the governor's race, Democrat Mary Burke.
"It is disgusting, insulting and outrageous for such a close ally of Governor Walker to compare the actions of sworn law enforcement officials investigating serious allegations of criminal wrongdoing to the most vile and heinous crime against women that there is," Burke spokeswoman Stephanie Wilson said.
Walker spokeswoman Alleigh Marre quickly condemned O'Keefe, whose legal maneuvers and sharp statements have raised questions about the John Doe probe but also kept it in the news for months _ a dubious benefit for a governor seeking re-election.
"Eric O'Keefe, who has no ties to the campaign, deserves nothing less than outright condemnation for his egregiously offensive remarks," Marre said.
The CRG case is being heard by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa, who also presided over the previous lawsuit by O'Keefe and the club, issuing an order in May that halted the investigation.
Randa was overruled last month by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, but the investigation remains stalled because of a ruling by state Judge Gregory Peterson, who is overseeing the Joe Doe probe. Peterson quashed subpoenas that had been issued in the John Doe by advancing a legal argument similar to the one put forward Friday by Van Hollen's office.
That ruling by Peterson is being appealed by prosecutors in yet another legal case in which Van Hollen and the state Department of Justice are representing Peterson. That creates an obstacle to representing the GAB, Lennington wrote in his letter to Kennedy.
"While conflict walls may be appropriate in certain circumstances, we will not construct those walls to advance the tenuous legal positions asserted (by the GAB)," he wrote.
John Doe investigations allow prosecutors to compel people to testify and produce documents and bar them from talking publicly about the probe.
CRG's suit is against Chisholm, Kennedy and the six former judges who make up the GAB. The board oversees the state's campaign finance laws and with Chisholm and Schmitz had been conducting the investigation into Walker, the club and other conservative groups.
Citizens for Responsible Government Advocates was founded in 2006 and is related to the entity that backed recalls more than a decade ago over a Milwaukee County pension scandal. Walker was elected Milwaukee County executive in 2002 after the pension scandal and went on to be elected governor in 2010.
CRG told the court it wants to collaborate with Vilas County Supervisor Kim Simac, Waukesha County Board Supervisor Carl Pettis and state Senate candidate Jason "Red" Arnold. But it has not started working with the candidates because the accountability board and Chisholm have said such collaboration can be illegal, even if a group does not urge people to vote for a particular candidate, the group said in its suit.
The group is asking the court to declare that the officials' view of the law is wrong and that it has a constitutional right to work with the candidates.
It maintains its plans are in keeping with the First Amendment right to free speech and free association. It also argues state officials' views on campaign finance laws violate the group's 14th Amendment right "not to be subject to vague government edicts."
Chris Kliesmet, the group's president, said the lawsuit is being funded by Citizens for Self-Governance. O'Keefe sits on that group's board of directors.
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