Stuart Taylor writes about the John Doe investigation …

Those conservatives say that the long-running criminal investigation has unconstitutionally prevented them and their allies from participating in politics and tilted the political field to favor Democrats, whose campaign practices are almost identical to the Republicans’ but largely ignored by the prosecutors. The probe, conservatives say, has forced them to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills and harassed some of them with pre-dawn raids on their suburban homes that seized cell phones and computers of all family members, including a child’s iPad. Prosecutors imposed “gag orders” to prevent the investigation’s targets from publicly complaining.

Wisconsin Republicans, and some Democrats in Washington, contend that the Democratic district attorney is distorting campaign finance laws to criminalize ordinary politics. …

A “John Doe” is a legal proceeding under Wisconsin law that allows prosecutors, with a judge’s approval, to require complete secrecy from any one involved. This “gag order” provision, almost unique in American law, effectively disables targets or witnesses from publicly defending themselves or responding to damaging leaks.

… and reveals:

Now a longtime Chisholm subordinate reveals for the first time in this article that the district attorney may have had personal motivations for his investigation. Chisholm told him and others that Chisholm’s wife, Colleen, a teacher’s union shop steward at St. Francis High School, a public school near Milwaukee, had been repeatedly moved to tears by Walker’s anti-union policies in 2011, according to the former staff prosecutor in Chisholm’s office. Chisholm said in the presence of the former prosecutor that his wife “frequently cried when discussing the topic of the union disbanding and the effect it would have on the people involved … She took it personally.”

Citing fear of retaliation, the former prosecutor declined to be identified and has not previously talked to reporters.

Chisholm added, according to that prosecutor, that “he felt that it was his personal duty to stop Walker from treating people like this.”

Chisholm was referring to Gov. Walker’s proposal – passed by the legislature in March 2011 – to require public employee unions to contribute to their retirement and health-care plans for the first time and to limit unions’ ability to bargain for non-wage benefits.

Chisholm said his wife had joined teachers union demonstrations against Walker, said the former prosecutor. The 2011 political storm over public unions was unlike any previously seen in Wisconsin. Protestors crowded the State Capitol grounds and roared in the Rotunda. Picketers appeared outside of Walker’s private home. There were threats of boycotts and even death to Walker’s supporters. Two members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court almost came to blows. Political ad spending set new records. Wisconsin was bitterly divided.

Still, Chisholm’s private displays of partisan animus stunned the former prosecutor. “I admired him [Chisholm] greatly up until this whole thing started,” the former prosecutor said. “But once this whole matter came up, it was surprising how almost hyper-partisan he became … It was amazing … to see this complete change.”

The culture in the Milwaukee district attorney’s office was stoutly Democratic, the former prosecutor said, and become more so during Gov. Walker’s battle with the unions. Chisholm “had almost like an anti-Walker cabal of people in his office who were just fanatical about union activities and unionizing. And a lot of them went up and protested. They hung those blue fists on their office walls [to show solidarity with union protestors] … At the same time, if you had some opposing viewpoints that you wished to express, it was absolutely not allowed.”

When I was on Wisconsin Public Radio a few months ago and brought up Chisholm’s political views interfering with his duty, my opponent claimed Chisholm was a man of integrity and so on. My opponent appears to have been mistaken.

The irony here is that Chisholm makes $122,612 per year as district attorney. His wife made, in the 2012–13 school year, $52,384. Their own family income is more than three times this state’s median family income, and yet he feels free to harass those of more conservative views, and she is another union thug.

At minimum, Chisholm has two conflicts of interest, and every member of his staff has one major conflict of interest. Their pay was reduced by Act 10, which was proposed and signed into law by Walker. Chisholm’s wife’s pay was also reduced by Act 10. They have a direct stake in Walker’s actions, therefore by the code of lawyers under no circumstances should they be investigating Walker.

Wisconsin Reporter adds:

Chisholm and two of his assistant DAs, Bruce Landgraf and David Robles, are defendants in a civil rights lawsuit filed in February by targets of the probe. The conservatives allege the Milwaukee County prosecutors deprived them of their First Amendment rights of speech and association.

The complaint, alleging Chisholm and his office were driven by their political bias against Walker and his controversial collective-bargaining reforms, underlines some partisan perception problems for Chisholm and may support some of the contentions of the former prosecutor:

• During the 2011-2012 campaign to recall Walker, at least 43 (and possibly as many as 70) employees within Chisholm’s office signed the recall petition, including at least one deputy district attorney, 19 assistant district attorneys and members of the District Public Integrity Unit. The DA’s office is assisted directly by five deputy DAs and 125 assistant DAs, according to the agency’s website.
• Altogether, as of April 2012, employees in Chisholm’s office had donated to Democratic over Republican candidates by roughly a 4-to-1 ratio.
• Chisholm, a Democrat, has been supported by labor unions in previous campaigns, including in the most recent race to hold his DA position, during which the received support from, among others, the AFL-CIO, the complaint notes. He also is a donor to Democratic Party candidates and, as of April 2012, had given $2,200 exclusively to Democratic and liberal candidates.

“The revelation by a former Wisconsin prosecutor that the John Doe proceedings against Governor Scott Walker may have been motivated by pro-union political considerations is chilling,” said William A. Jacobson, publisher of Legal Insurrection and Cornell Law School professor, in a statement.

“To date, no one has been able to explain why District Attorney John Chisholm has gone to the lengths he has gone to try to find criminal conduct that could taint Governor Walker. If this new information is accurate, now we know the motivation, and there needs to be an investigation of the investigators.”

There also needs to be an investigation of the priorities of the Milwaukee County DA’s office. Sierra Guyton died because she got in the way of a shootout between one person reportedly arrested 15 times before he turned 18, and another recently released from prison for reckless homicide. Had Chisholm’s DAs done their jobs better, those two would have not been out on the streets. Milwaukee has the worst crime problems in the state, and Chisholm’s failure to use state laws to put the bad guys away are making crime worse. Chisholm apparently believes persecuting non-Democrats is more important than prosecuting criminals.

As I’ve written here before, any Republican or conservative who has the misfortune of becoming a defendant in Milwaukee County is, in the eyes of the Milwaukee County DA’s office, automatically guilty. It’s a good thing Wisconsin doesn’t have the death penalty.