A story that's just bubbling up now looks like it could be big, finally exposing Scott Walker's inability to tell the truth to the media and voters alike. How much more is he trying to hide?
WKOW's Greg Nuemann: Governor Scott Walker (R-Wisconsin) has been extremely critical of Hillary Clinton's use of personal email … despite the fact that two former aides in his Milwaukee County Executive's office were convicted of crimes for using personal email to campaign on county time. But a 27 News investigation into the use and disclosure of personal emails by the Governor's office is raising questions about just how those records are handled. On May 28, 27 News asked Gov. Walker if he knew whether former Chief of Staff Keith Gilkes, former Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch or other members of his administration had used personal email for government business.Over at Cognitive Dissidence, I thought this amazing fact stood out, high lighted in red above:
"I don't know," said Gov. Walker. "I mean, not that I'm aware of."
But we now know the Governor was aware of it at the time that exchange took place … in the first year of the Walker administration, state business was conducted through more than 300 personal emails. Some of the emails were sent to or from Governor Walker's own personal address.
But dozens of the emails 27 News received were never sent to an official state account until they were forwarded to the government email address of Gov. Walker's Chief Legal Counsel Brian Hagedorn on July 31, 2015. That date comes four years after the emails were originally written and two months after our open records request.
"Yeah, I think it's an issue to be sure and apparently and potentially a serious one," said Bob Drechsel, director of the UW-Madison Center for Journalism Ethics, who believes that delay and lag time raises questions about whether 27 News even got all of the personal emails that ever existed, or if some were permanently deleted from personal accounts long ago.
The reason that the emphasized section should raise a red flag for the gentle reader is that on the very same date that Hagedorn had received these emails is the same day that Walker announced that he was politically appointing Hagedorn to an appellate court seat despite that Hagedorn had no experience or qualifications for that position.
Was that appointment made to reward Hagedorn for his political operations, as a form of hush money to buy Hagedorn's silence or both?
The most shocking thing about any email associated with Scott Walker is that he was part of a secret email system while County Executive - an email system intended to circumvent the open records laws - and no one found this appalling. Fprget that this system was also used by campaign staff, bad enough in itself: it was a system that was intended to keep information away from citizens. Reporters, editorial writers, supreme court justices, no one understood this for what it was, or chose to expose it for what it was. Citizens found it exactly as interesting as a yawn.
ReplyDeleteWhy this hasn't been hung around his neck like a millstone is beyond me. It's an embarrassment for the whole state.