It turns out that Scott Walker was illegally coordinating with 3rd party groups:
Gov. Scott Walker prodded outside groups and individuals to funnel millions of dollars into Wisconsin Club for Growth — a pro-Walker group directed by his campaign adviser — during the recall elections in 2011 and 2012, according to court documents unsealed for a short time Friday afternoon.
The documents form much of the basis for prosecutors’ theory that Walker’s campaign and conservative groups illegally cooperated to help him and other Republicans. Walker and the groups deny they broke any laws, noting two judges have sided with them.
Among the funds that flowed into the Wisconsin Club for Growth was $700,000 from a company trying to build a massive open-pit iron mine in northern Wisconsin. Soon after the 2012 recall and general elections, Walker and Republicans eased environmental regulations, helping the firm.
“The Governor is encouraging all to invest in the Wisconsin Club for Growth,” said an April 28, 2011, email from Kate Doner, a Walker campaign consultant, to R.J. Johnson, an adviser to Walker’s campaign and the advocacy group. “Wisconsin Club for Growth can accept corporate and personal donations without limitations and no donors disclosure.”
In the email, Doner wrote to Johnson that Walker wanted Wisconsin Club for Growth exclusively to coordinate campaign themes. “As the Governor discussed … he wants all the issue advocacy efforts run thru one group to ensure correct messaging,” she wrote.
Walker’s campaign has paid Doner’s fundraising firm $1.26 million since 2011, including more than $70,000 in his latest spending report.
The hundreds of pages of documents that became available Friday afternoon also showed Walker’s team sought to solicit funds for the Wisconsin Club for Growth from an array of nationally known donors to fend off his 2012 recall. Real esate developer Donald Trump, industrialist billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson were all targets.
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Mining company Gogebic Taconite LLC’s $700,000 contribution to the Wisconsin Club for Growth was not publicly known until Friday.
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Gogebic first announced its plans in November 2010. By mid 2011, the company said that it wouldn’t move forward until Wisconsin changed iron mine laws to give more certainty to the regulatory process.
The company had an early hand in writing a mining bill and continued to play a key role throughout the legislative process. The bill, one of GOP’s signature pieces of legislation since Walker’s election, was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Walker in early 2013.
Why hasn’t he been indicted yet?
H/t Charlie Pierce, for this update on, “Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest facility formerly known as the state of Wisconsin.”