Stuart Taylor follows up on his report of the real character of Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm:

After missing a scoop on Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm’s long-running investigation into Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writers, along with the district attorney’s staff, hunted down the key source who had asked for anonymity, fearing retaliation.

That story, produced by the American Media Institute and published by Legal Newsline last week, said that the district attorney’s wife was a teachers union shop steward, had taken part in demonstrations against the Republican governor’s proposal to curb public employee unions and was repeatedly moved to tears by governor’s legislative crusade.

Chisholm, a Democrat, said privately that it was his “personal duty to stop Walker,” the confidential source said.

AMI’s confidential source was a former prosecutor in Chisholm’s office who feared his reputation and his law practice would suffer if he were unmasked.

The district attorney’s staff launched a Nixon-style “mole hunt” to find the anonymous source, a Journal Sentinel columnist said, and was annoyed that the description of the confidential source wasn’t precise enough to identify him. The staff developed a list of roughly a dozen suspects, the columnist said. The Journal Sentinel never reported this secret search.

The feared retaliation was not long in coming. The Journal Sentinel’s Dan Bice, whose “political watchdog” column is titled “No Quarter,” appeared after dark at the source’s home on Sept. 11. Bice’s persistent door-bell ringing and heavy knocks awakened and frightened the source’s sleeping 12-year-old daughter, he said. The noise was so loud that a neighbor came out to investigate the din, he said.

When the source, a decorated and disabled-in-the-line-of-duty police officer, Michael Lutz, came to the door, he opened it a crack to hear Bice demand to know if he was the person quoted in the story. He did not deny it and speaks exclusively on the record in this story for the first time.

Lutz says he has been friends with John and Colleen Chisholm for more than a decade. He admires the district attorney, considering him a role model and mentor. He says he worked with Chisholm as a police officer and in the district attorney’s office, first as a law school intern in 2010 and as a special prosecutor in 2011 – a period of more than a year, not the five-and-a-half months reported by Bice.

(An editing change in this reporter’s Sept. 9 article identified Lutz as a “longtime Chisholm subordinate,” which has been faulted as inaccurate. Even if valid, the criticism has little or no relevance to Lutz’s credibility in light of what can now be revealed about him. In any event, police officers can be called subordinate to the district attorney.)

Lutz says he met with Chisholm in his private office in 2011 and was surprised when he heard the district attorney say that his wife had wept repeatedly and joined demonstrations against Walker, who was fighting for and winning legislative approval of his union reforms. Lutz said Chisholm demonstrated what he called a “hyper-partisan” bias against Walker.

Lutz’s motivation for speaking out was based on principle: “I don’t like what he [Chisholm] has done in regard to political speech that he disagrees with.”

Revealing how Chisholm allegedly spoke of his wife’s anguish in connection with his own determination to “stop” Walker, Lutz said, wasn’t meant to harm her. “I never did anything to hurt anyone,” Lutz said. “I just wanted to speak the truth because I don’t think it’s right the way they are stifling speech.”

Citing one previously unreported example, Lutz mentions not being “allowed” to express an opposing viewpoint. He wrote in an May 20, 2012, email to an unidentified person:

When “I was a Special Prosecutor in the DA’s office and [Wisconsin Supreme Court] Justice [David] Prosser approached me to do a [pre-election] video spot about how the decision authored by him about the guy who shot me was a very important ruling for Police officers in general, DA Chisholm … stated that he couldn’t allow me to do it and he wants to stay as far away from these Republicans as he can … Fast forward 8 months and HIS [Chisholm’s] liberal block of DA’s, 80% of them, are actively campaigning, emailing, and even verbally bashing Walker at meetings. I think Chisholm has left the reservation and now has his flag firmly planted in the liberal left’s camp.”

Prosser won his election in April 2011. He voted with the majority on July 31 when the state Supreme Court upheld Walker’s reforms by a vote of 5-2.

Lutz felt he had a lot to lose if his identity were revealed, which Bice and the Journal Sentinel did on Sept. 12. Lutz felt that if he were exposed as the source, it would be hard to find clients once everyone in the county knew that the district attorney was now his enemy.

Most journalists’ first instinct is to protect the identity of whistleblowers against powerful people likely to retaliate against them. Not columnist Bice or the Journal Sentinel. They have devoted their energy to exposing Lutz’s identity, subjecting him to attacks, and seeking to discredit him.

Chisholm’s wide-ranging investigation into Walker, his staff and 29 nonprofit conservative groups was accompanied by sweeping subpoenas for documents, phone records, emails, cell phones, computers and more; predawn raids on conservative activists’ homes without allowing them to call their lawyers; and “gag orders” about the investigation. These gag orders silenced virtually all of the conservative movement in Wisconsin by denying its leaders the chance to defend themselves publicly.

This was by design, say critics who characterize the investigation itself as a political vendetta by a Democratic district attorney against a Republican governor.

Over the years, Chisholm’s office has consistently denied political motivations, stressing the roles of two Republican district attorneys who opened proceedings to help enlarge his investigation’s territorial reach, and that of Francis Schmitz, a political independent who was made Special Prosecutor and titular head of the investigation in August 2013.

The entire investigation was found unconstitutional and temporarily blocked by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa in a May 8 decision that is now on appeal. During the Sept. 9 oral arguments, one of the three federal appellate judges, Frank Easterbrook, noted that the gag orders appeared to be “screamingly unconstitutional” while expressing doubt (as did Judge Diane Wood) that the case belonged in federal court. …

Lutz provided additional information and documents that call into question the objectivity of the Journal Sentinel’s reporting.

As a police officer working in Milwaukee, Lutz was named “Professional Law Enforcement Officer of the Year” in 1997 and again in 2007. He received the Milwaukee Police Department’s Purple Award of Valor in 2009, commendations for heroism in 1996 and 2006, and an Award of Merit from the FBI in 2006. In all, he won 11 honors and decorations.

Injured in the line of duty, he retired on disability pay and went to law school, earning his degree in December 2010. He worked in Chisholm’s office to gain experience from June 2010 to July 2011.

When Lutz went into private practice, Chisholm wrote a memo to him on July 27, 2011, that said his service “has been exemplary,” that his “dedication and hard work … have proved to be invaluable,” and that “I am extremely grateful for the service you provided.”

In a previous letter of recommendation from November 2007, Chisholm wrote that Lutz had been “one of the best investigators in the Milwaukee police department” and had “removed some of the most dangerous offenders from the streets of Milwaukee” while combining “a remarkable memory with unceasing hard work and courage.”

Critics of the Journal Sentinel’s coverage of Chisholm’s investigation of Walker, his staff and his allies have long complained of what they call biased reporting and commentary, especially by Bice, overseen by Managing Editor George Stanley.

“Dan Bice and the Journal Sentinel have abandoned journalistic standards in covering the long-running investigation of Gov. Scott Walker, his staff, and allied conservative advocacy groups,” said George Mitchell, a former journalist who worked for former U.S. Rep. Les Aspin and former Wisconsin Gov. Pat Lucey – both Democrats.

“Bice and the paper have relied heavily on material that originated from illegal leaks. They have smeared numerous innocent people who were barred by secrecy orders from responding to rumors and leaks. They have dishonestly portrayed completely legal and widespread political conduct. The list goes on. It is long.”

Lutz says he has no animus toward Chisholm, adding he gave $200 last month for a Chisholm campaign fundraiser. He has visited the Chisholms’ home several times and gone to dinners, after-work functions, and other outings with one or both of them over the years.

As to the effect of the Journal Sentinel campaign to discredit him, Lutz said in an email:

“I have relocated my kids to prevent them from being brought to tears by any more J-S reporters and to protect them from the onslaught that has already begun. All for telling the truth.”

The consequences for telling that truth are already being felt, Lutz writes. “My law practice … is over in MKE [Milwaukee]. There is no doubt, as one person has put it, that I am already blacklisted. . . . . Supporting the family will be difficult. Of course, it has been a huge undertaking to go through 4 surgeries, take care of 2 children, drive back and forth to Madison daily in order to get my law license … only to be persecuted for simply telling the truth.”

In response to suggestions by the Journal Sentinel that Lutz must not be telling the truth because no other current or former employee of the district attorney’s office has corroborated his allegations, Lutz says: “No one in the current DA’s office or any practicing attorney in Milwaukee would dare speak up against Chisholm or even mention a suggestion of partisanship. Their [private] practice would be killed in Milwaukee. Mine is finished but I can still rely on my police pension.”

Mitchell adds:

In a responsible newsroom, Chisholm and Lutz would get equal scrutiny and balanced reporting.  There’s obviously no chance of that happening.

In a responsible legal environment, Lutz’s claims would get independent scrutiny, perhaps by the state’s Judicial Commission.  Chisholm is an officer of the court.  The Commission’s “task is to enforce high standards of judicial behavior, both on and off the bench, without compromising judicial independence. [It] strives to maintain public confidence in the judiciary by providing a forum for the expeditious and fair disposition of complaints of judicial misconduct and disability.”  If ever there was a case of where “public confidence” is at issue, this is it.

Mary Burke made news last week, and not news of the good kind for a political candidate.

If Burke’s jobs plan seems familiar, there’s a good reason, M.D. Kittle reports:

Buzzfeed, which has had its own PR black eyes with plagiarism, reported late Thursday that Burke’s plan, “Invest for Success” pilfers entire passages from the jobs plans laid out by Delaware Democratic Gov. Jack Markell in 2008, and Democratic gubernatorial candidates Ward Cammack of Tennessee in 2009 and John Gregg of Indiana in 2012.

A spokesman for the Burke campaign told BuzzFeed News an “expert” named Eric Schnurer, “who also worked on the other campaigns(,) as responsible for the similar text, a case of self-plagiarism.” Schnurer is founder and president of Philadelphia-based consulting firm Public Works.

Burke campaign spokesman Joe Zepecki told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Schnurer was let go as soon the camp was made aware of the BuzzFeed report.

Zepecki defended the swiping, telling the newspaper the sections represented “fewer than 10 paragraphs of a 49-page plan.” …

BuzzFeed cited several passages in Burke’s plan pulled nearly verbatim from the work of others, including:

Ward Cammack’s plan:

Expanding intern programs to provide help to small farmers and also give students direct agricultural education and experience.

And here’s Burke:

Expanding intern programs to provide help to small farmers and also give students direct agricultural education and experience.

Here’s Gregg:

At the same time, small-and medium-sized businesses have been hiring new employees at a faster rate than large companies since the beginning of the economic recovery in 2009.

And here’s Burke:

And in the short-term, small-and medium-sized businesses have been hiring new employees at a faster rate than large companies since the beginning of the economic recovery in 2009.

You can read all of Cammack’s plan here … if you have nothing better to do.

This is one of the things that as someone with a degree in political science (for what that’s worth) and in journalism (for what that’s worth), I just shake my head. It is just lazy for Schnurer to copy and paste his own work instead of rewriting it, particularly in an era in which your own previous work is probably somewhere on the World Wide Web. This certainly doesn’t reflect well on the Burke campaign either, because someone working for the campaign evidently didn’t vet Schnurer enough, as demonstrated by Schnurer’s firing for the offense of publicly embarrassing his employer.

The next thing that comes to mind is that only one of the three Democrats got elected with this plan, whoever belonged to it first, and him in a generally Democratic state. Since the first goal of politics is to get elected, this document is one for three on that test, which is good in baseball and volleyball hitting and nowhere else.

This is more a case of intellectual laziness on the part of Burke (who, remember, derided Scott Walker’s 2010 economic plan as appearing to have been written by an eighth-grader) than plagiarism, even though if you put your name on it, it’s your work whether or not you actually did the work. (Which I suppose makes Burke an accessory to self-plagiarism, or something.) Wisconsin is neither Indiana nor Tennessee nor Delaware. Apparently Burke, or Burke’s campaign, could not be bothered to create a Wisconsin-centric document, which makes you question how serious Burke is about being governor. (Which is, of course, different from getting elected governor.)

BuzzFeed reports that that’s not the only instance of Burke’s borrowed work:

In Mary Burke’s Invest in our Rural Communities  plan:

Here’s a Council Of State Governments report from 2003:

At a time when U.S. manufacturing employment is generally on the decline, the production of wind equipment is one of the few potentially large sources of new manufacturing jobs on the horizon.

And here’s Burke:

While manufacturing employment in general has been declining for years, the production of wind equipment is one of the few potentially large sources of new manufacturing jobs.

In Mary Burke’s recent Plan for Wisconsin Veterans:

Here’s a 2013 Dunn County News column:

The opposition argued that the bill would impose additional burdens on those that were injured — and in some cases plaintiffs could die before their cases made it through the lengthened court process.

And here’s Burke:

This places additional burdens on those who were injured and in some cases plaintiffs could die before their cases make it through the lengthened court process.

Here’s the Wisconsin Food Cooperative’s website:

The WFHC helps local farmers by providing them with the opportunity, through marketing, sales, aggregation, and logistics, to access wholesale markets they could not access easily before.

And here’s Burke:

Promoting the replication of Food Hubs for helping small farmers get their produce to retail markets, profitably. The Food Hub model, exemplified by the Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative (WFHC), helps local farmers – through marketing, sales, aggregation, and logistics – to access wholesale markets.

Here’s the National Rural Health Institute:

Although only one-third of all motor vehicle accidents occur in rural areas, two-thirds of the deaths attributed to these accidents occur on rural roads.

And here’s Burke:

And although only one-third of motor vehicle accidents occur in rural areas, two-thirds of automobile fatalities occur on rural roads.

Here’s the Journal of Extension on incubator farms:

An incubator farm is typically a place where people are given temporary, exclusive, and affordable access to small parcels of land and infrastructure, and often training, for the purpose of honing skills and launching farm businesses.

And here’s Burke:

An incubator farm, like other entrepreneurial incubators, is a place where aspiring farmers can have temporary affordable access to small parcels of land and infrastructure, training, practice, and mentorship for the purpose of honing skills and launching farm businesses.

The plagiarism, if that’s what you want to call it, is actually the least of the issues here. No one is concerned when good ideas are borrowed from someone else. Did Bill Clinton plagiarize from Tommy Thompson when Clinton came up with federal welfare reform? Who cares? Welfare reform was something whose time was long overdue. When Ronald Reagan proposed income tax cuts when he was running for president, I doubt Arthur Laffer cared whether or not Reagan gave him credit. Are all of the Democrats running on increasing the minimum wage guilty of plagiarism from whoever thought of it first?

Wisconsin lefties have been complaining for years about the American Legislative Exchange Council, and Gaia forbid if one of their ideas ever ends up in a bill in the Legislature. A good idea — for instance, fiscal responsibility, a big ALEC issue — stands up regardless of whether it’s an original idea or not. (More on that later.)

Since perception is reality in politics, Jerry Bader notes how this hurts Burke:

In my formative years in talk radio someone once taught me: “don’t answer questions people aren’t asking.” That’s a radio consultant’s clever way of saying be relevant with your topics. In politics the strategy of answering questions people aren’t asking is often employed to avoid answering the questions people are asking. It’s the politician’s equivalent of the magician’s sleight of hand; get the audience to watch one hand so they won’t notice what the other hand is doing. With the media playing the role of her lovely assistant, gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke is attempting to pull off such a trick. …

All of this is decidedly answering a question no one is asking. Burke isn’t under fire because Schnurer “plagiarized himself.” She’s under fire for passing off his ideas as her own. With Governor Scott Walker falling short on his pledge of 250,000 jobs created in his first term, Burke unveiled the plan in an effort to establish her economic gravitas. And as noted above, there was little uncertainty at the time that this was being presented as Mary Burke’s plan, created by her based on her Ivy League education and personal business experience. We now know that’s not true. Yet Burke isn’t speaking to that point and the media isn’t pressing her to answer a question people are indeed asking. …

Yet, in this case, Burke is the hapless victim of an unscrupulous consultant. When they called the plan “thoughtful and substantial” back in March, was there any doubt the JS was lauding what it believed to be Burke’s thoughts and substance? This is a case of plagiarism, but not on Eric Schnurer’s part. Burke passed off his ideas as her own when she unveiled this plan. Of course, given that most of the ideas are well established liberal pabulum (full disclosure: The Weekly Standard called them that before I did) we should have known they weren’t Burke’s original thought. That might be her most honest possible defense of all.

Beyond its lack of originality, Burke’s, or Schnurer’s, plan needed an editor and a proofreader because, Tom Blumer reports:

The real problem with Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke’s “jobs plan” … isn’t its plagiarized material. It’s the content. The presence of certain obviously wrong facts and patently pathetic assertions indicates that Ms. Burke, a successful entrepreneur who one would think should have known better, hardly scrutinized her plan at all before allowing its publication. …

Burke’s plan claims that “small-and medium-sized businesses have been hiring new employees at a faster rate than large companies since the beginning of the economic recovery in 2009.”

Bloomberg reported in January 2013 that “Payrolls at firms with fewer than 500 employees accounted for less than 50 percent of the total workforce for the first time in 2008 during the recession and have barely recovered.”

In March of 2013, Joel Kotkin at Forbes wrote:

… small business is still in recession. The number of startup jobs per 1,000 Americans over the past four years fell a full 30% below the levels of the Bush and Clinton eras…. a recent Brookings study reveals … (that) larger businesses came out of the recovery stronger, not their beleaguered smaller counterparts.

Burke’s material here in this regard isn’t just plagiarized; it’s dated boilerplate. The statement about small business was predominantly true for decades before the most recent recession; since then, it has not been. This tells me that Burke and her team didn’t really vet the material they were presented, not only for originality but for simple accuracy.

Another claim copied verbatim was made in plagiarized materials about other states in previous years:

Our university and college systems have made great progress in aligning requirements for course work to make transferring credits easier.

Given the plagiarism, it would seem fair to assert that even if this statement is true, it’s only by accident, and not the result of any specific research into Badger State higher education practices.

Going to the detailed jobs plan, even the most basic claims Burke makes don’t hold up, like this one:

When I served as Wisconsin’s Commerce Secretary, Wisconsin had 72,000 more jobs than it does now, based on the latest data.

The plan specifically refers to the following table at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and is as of roughly February of this year:

There is no point in time during Burke’s 2005-2007 tenure when Wisconsin’s statewide employment was 72,000 jobs higher than at the right end of the graph. The largest difference is roughly 55,000.

Burke also claimed, as if we’re supposed to be impressed, that:

The state’s annual average unemployment rate was never higher than 4.8% when I was Commerce Secretary – but unemployment has never been below 6.1% under the current Administration.

At the time it was written, the state’s February seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 6.1 percent was 0.6 points below the national average. Its August rate of 5.6 percent was a half-point lower. Wisconsin’s unemployment rate of 4.8 percent in February of 2005 was 0.6 points below the nation’s 5.4 percent. In October 2007, the last full month of Burke’s tenure as the State’s Secretary of Commerce, the state’s unemployment rate of 4.7 percent was the same as the rest of the nation. Compared to the U.S. as a whole, Wisconsin squandered its lead under Burke, but has stayed ahead under Governor Scott Walker. Wisconsin’s current unadjusted unemployment rate is only 5.1 percent, which under the left’s “new normal” definition, is actually below, i.e., better than, full employment, which they now define as 5.5 percent unemployment.

I could go on, but I don’t need to. Readers can see that plagiarism is the least of the problems with Mary Burke’s jobs plan. Basic accuracy is its primary shortcoming.

The better question is whether or not Burke’s plan (or whoever wants to take ownership of the plan) would actually create jobs. Collin Roth gives four reasons the exact opposite would happen:

1.) The Minimum Wage – Mary Burke supports the nationwide initiative to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. Burke has said, “I think increasing the minimum wage leads to people being able to support themselves and their families, and we can do it in a way that’s not going to hurt job creation.”

But according to a study by Dr. David MacPherson of Trinity University commissioned by the Wisconsin Restaurant Association (WRA), hiking the minimum wage to $10.10 could cost as many as 16,500 jobs in Wisconsin. The WRA study finds that “increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 would eliminate 16,500 jobs—over half of which are jobs held by women. The bulk of the job losses would be concentrated among individuals with a high school degree or less, and among people who work in the retail or leisure & hospitality industries.”

2.) The Northern Wisconsin Mine – Mary Burke was made it very clear that she opposes the GTac mine and if elected would work to put a stop to it. “I’m against that mine,” Burke told a Madison radio show in 2013.

The GTac mine is a $1.5 billion investment in Northern Wisconsin and is anticipated to support 3,175 jobs during the two year construction phase. Once constructed, the mine would create around 700 jobs at the mine while supporting 2,834 jobs in the 12 county region surrounding the mine.

3.) Obamacare – Mary Burke has made expanding Obamacare in Wisconsin a centerpiece of her campaign. In 2008, Burke campaigned for President Obama and touted his healthcare reform. An MSNBC interview said “Burke is an unequivocal supporter of the Affordable Care Act.”

But once again, studies have revealed that the Affordable Care Act is, and will, take a toll on the Wisconsin economy. A recent study from the American Action Fund found that Obamacare has already cost 4,239 jobs at small businesses in Wisconsin. And when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected the ACA could result in 2.5 million job losses by 2024, Americans for Tax Reform broke that down into each state. ATR projects that Wisconsin could lose 51,633 jobs.

4.) EPA Regulations – In an interview with Politico, Mary Burke was given the opportunity to explain any policy or position that she might disagree with President Obama. After a 12 second pause, Burke took the life preserver from her aide and said trade issues.

President Obama’s new EPA regulations are anticipated to be nothing short of a bomb dropped on the Wisconsin economy. A study from the Heritage Foundation found that Wisconsin could lose 11,702 jobs by 2023 due to the EPA regulations on carbon emissions. In addition, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) found that new ozone standards being pushed by the EPA could be the costliest regulation in history. In Wisconsin, the new ozone standards would result in 52,031 lost jobs or job equivalents.

Burke’s positions on these four issues prove that Burke really knows nothing about Wisconsin business beyond her family’s own business. Whether or not someone gets a business degree, someone in business at some point learns that things that increase expenses (wage increases not based on improving the business, ObamaCare) are bad for business, which mean they’re bad for employees.

Someone probably should tell Burke that the three biggest business sectors in Wisconsin are manufacturing, agriculture and tourism. If Burke knew that, she might realize, or someone might be able to get her to understand, that the EPA’s dumping 52,000 Wisconsin manufacturing jobs would be bad for Wisconsin. And then maybe someone could get Burke to understand that a higher minimum wage’s dumping 16,500 jobs in one part of tourism would also be bad for Wisconsin. And then maybe someone could get Burke to understand that ObamaCare’s trashing 51,000 jobs across every sector of Wisconsin business would also be bad for Wisconsin.

You need not use Invest for Success in Delaware/Indiana/Tennessee/Wisconsin as evidence that Burke is not serious about being governor. Burke’s positions on her supposed strength, business, prove that she’s not a serious candidate for governor. Mitch Henck wrote in the Wisconsin State Journal Sunday that Burke “has to convince voters she’s a pro-business Democrat …” when the only correct word in that phrase is “Democrat.”