[EL] my thoughts on the John Doe case

Thu Jul 16 11:06:11 PDT 2015

I will stipulate that police are over-aggressive in their use of force in
many contexts, and am long on recprd on that point (as are many
libertarians). So, with that stipulated to, will Rick defend the use of
these tactics here?  Saying the police commit similar abuses elsewhere
seems like a dodge.

JHA
On Jul 16, 2015 7:51 AM, "Rick Hasen" <rhasen at law.uci.edu> wrote:

>  So they were under a gag order and could tell no one except the National
> Review, FOX News, and the WSJ editorial page?
>
> And as far as police investigations go, and raids looking for illegal
> activity---what do you think these ordinarily look like outside the
> campaign finance context?
>
> Rick
>
> On 7/16/15 8:38 AM, Lycan, Eric wrote:
>
>  I find it ironic that you question the harassment of the subpoena
> targets and the stories of the pre-dawn paramilitary raids, and dismiss
> them as a “conservative meme”, on the bases that they shared their stories
> only with conservative media outlets and that “without full transparency
> the stories cannot be fully investigated.”  These are persons who had
> suffered exactly that kind of terrifying harassment, had been threatened
> with imprisonment if they told anyone, yet it is somehow suspicious that
> they told their stories only to media sources unlikely to out them to the
> prosecution?  The call for transparency in investigating these stories is
> particularly ironic given the complete lack of transparency of the
> investigation itself and of the motives of the prosecutors and
> investigators.
>
>
>
> I would really like to see someone on the reformist side argue for their
> interpretation of the coordination issue without also defending the conduct
> of the John Doe investigation and the abuses in the search warrants and
> service thereof.  As the axiom goes, bad cases make bad law. When the
> government oversteps like it did in this case it validates the concerns of
> those who oppose the regulation of political speech.  Does anyone on the
> reformer side regret the actions of the John Doe investigators, or blame
> those actions at least in part for the ruling that coordination is
> prohibited only in relation to express advocacy?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [image: Dinsmore]
>
>
> *D. Eric Lycan *Partner
>
> Dinsmore & Shohl LLP  •  Legal Counsel
> Lexington Financial Center
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> *T* (859) 425-1047  •  *F* (859) 425-1099
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>
> *@KY_campaignlaw*
>
>
>
> *From:* law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [
> mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
> <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>] *On Behalf Of *Rick Hasen
> *Sent:* Thursday, July 16, 2015 11:17 AM
> *To:* law-election at UCI.edu
> *Subject:* [EL] my thoughts on the John Doe case
>
>
> Analysis of Wisconsin John Doe Ruling: Bad News for Campaign Finance Laws
> <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=74355>
>
> Posted on July 16, 2015 7:36 am <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=74355> by *Rick
> Hasen* <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
>
> Today’s lengthy and contentious 4-2 ruling
> <http://www.wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/DisplayDocument.html?content=html&seqNo=144526> dividing
> the Court on partisan/ideological lines, from the Wisconsin Supreme Court
> ending the so-called “John Doe” probe, is significant for three reasons:
> (1) it removes a cloud from the Scott Walker presidential campaign; (2) it
> guts, perhaps for years, the effectiveness of the state of Wisconsin’s
> campaign finance laws, and (3) it reenforces conservative beliefs that they
> are the victims of frightening harassment, a belief which is likely to lead
> conservative judges to strike more campaign laws.  The case also raises
> significant questions about judicial recusal which go unanswered, and
> provide one of two potential bases to seek U.S. Supreme Court review in
> this case. Still, high court review seems unlikely.
>
> I will not spend any time on the effects of the case on the Scott Walker
> candidacy, as this is an obvious benefit.
>
> Nor will I review the background of this convoluted set of cases.  For
> more, see my earlier Slate piece
> <http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/06/the_scott_walker_case_in_wisconsin_could_shred_the_remaining_limits_on_influencing.html?wpsrc>,
> as well as early coverage of today’s ruling in the NY Times
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/us/wisconsin-court-to-rule-on-inquiry-involving-scott-walkers-2012-campaign.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news>
> , Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel,
> <http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/wisconsin-supreme-court-ends-john-doe-probe-into-scott-walkers-campaign-b99535414z1-315784501.html>
>  andWisconsin State Journal
> <http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/supreme-court-ends-john-doe-probe-that-threatened-scott-walker/article_50f22c3b-27c9-5906-92e8-ded75ed50954.html>.
> So let me focus on the remaining two points, and the potential for Court
> review.
>
> *Gutting of campaign finance.  *The conservatives on the Court have held
> that Wisconsin’s existing campaign finance laws violate the First Amendment
> to the extent they limit coordination between a candidate and *any group*,
> even a 501c4 group not disclosing its donors, on campaigns to support that
> candidate. The only thing the nominally outside group has to do is to avoid
> words of express advocacy or their functional equivalent.  Avoiding express
> advocacy while vigorously supporting a candidate, as we know from the
> federal period before McCain-Feingold, is child’s play. That is, a
> candidate can now direct unlimited contributions to a nominally outside
> group and tell that group what ads to run, when, and how.  If you think it
> is a problem for someone to be able to give millions of dollars directly to
> a candidate to support that candidate’s campaign, then this should be very
> troubling to you. It was a theory of coordination strongly rejected by the
> 7th Circuit in the federal version of the John Doe case. And there’s no
> prospect that the Wisconsin legislature, dominated by Republicans and
> already weakening campaign finance law, will fix this.  This applies only
> to Wisconsin elections (and not federal elections in Wisconsin) but is
> very, very bad news. (More analysis in my earlier *Slate* piece.)
> <http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/06/the_scott_walker_case_in_wisconsin_could_shred_the_remaining_limits_on_influencing.html?wpsrc>
>
> *Conservative harassment.* For months, conservatives have been sending me
> stories for ELB purporting to show the horrors of the investigation (late
> night raids, etc.)  However, these stories were never fully verified. As
> the Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel editorialized
> <http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/open-john-doe-investigation-of-gov-scott-walker-to-the-public-b99491741z1-302162641.html> about
> the selling of this story: “A breathless article in the conservative
> National Review
> <http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417155/wisconsins-shame-i-thought-it-was-home-invasion-david-french>.
> An equally breathless report by Megyn Kelly on Fox News
> <http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2015/04/24/scott-walker-supporters-claim-police-raided-homes-over-politics/>
> . Tart comments from Gov. Scott Walker
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuuGYGWoaC0>on the campaign trail in
> Iowa…. onservatives targeted by the John Doe investigation for more than a
> year have declined to discuss their concerns with the Journal Sentinel or
> other independent news outlets that will seek out all sides to a story.
> They have told their stories only to partisan outlets that share their
> political agenda, such as Fox News, the National Review and The Wall
> Street Journal’s editorial page
> <http://www.wsj.com/articles/another-john-doe-disclosure-1402265159> (not
> its news staff).”  Now the conservatives on the Supreme Court have
> validated this version of events, and without full transparency the stories
> cannot be fully investigated. One Justice even went so far as to reach the
> issue of the constitutionality of the nighttime raids even though the issue
> was not before the Court. (I would love that Justice to ride along with
> police in the poorer parts of Milwaukee at night and perhaps gain some
> appreciation of what others face from law enforcement every day.) In the
> meantime, they fit into a conservative meme of persecution for conservative
> ideas. Expect this to lead to calls for even more laws to be struck down
> out of fear of persecution, fears which generally do not stand up to
> scrutiny <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1948313>.
>
> *Recusal?* We know that one of the prosecutors in the case asked at least
> one of the Justices who decided the case to recuse because the Justice may
> have been supported by some of the campaign spending in the case. As the
> dissenting Justice Abrahamson notes, the majority did not even respond to
> the issue. It seems to me that this at least deserves a response as to why
> recusal is not warranted.
>
> *U.S. Supreme Court review?* The dissent notes that under the U.S.
> Supreme Court’s *Caperton *decision*, *the failure to recuse in this case
> could be a due process violation. At least theoretically, that’s an issue
> which could go to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court could also potentially
> consider the First Amendment holding about coordinated issue advocacy. My
> guess is that the Court will decline review in this case, and frankly,
> given this Supreme Court on campaign finance issues, I’d be very afraid of
> having this issue before this Supreme Court. I mean I think Justice Kennedy
> would consider coordinated issue advocacy to be regulable, but I don’t know
> that I’d be the entire country’s campaign finance system on it.
>
> In all, this is an unsurprising partisan holding
> <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=74299> on a partisan court about a
> campaign finance investigation with partisan implications. (True, Justice
> Crooks who dissented campaigned as a conservative, but started as a
> Democrat. So I guess there’s that to argue this is not fully a partisan
> decision.) The Wisconsin Supreme Court has been among the most bitterly
> divided along partisan lines. I doubt that after this they will move on.
> This will just further entrench things.  A bad day for campaign finance,
> and a worse day for Wisconsin.
>
> [*This post has been updated and edited.*]
>
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> --
>
> Rick Hasen
>
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>
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