All throughout the successful fight against defenestration, and the subsequent rise to both Republican political superstardom and potential 2016 contenderhood, there has been something ominous bubbling under the career of Scott Walker, the twice-elected goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries as manager of their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. That thing was the stubborn persistence of a John Doe grand-jury investigation into whether or not Walker's aides practiced politics on the public dime back when Walker was a Milwaukee county executive and running for governor.

The investigation had gone to ground a bit in the months since Walker survived a recall vote last June. But it exploded again over the weekend. Walker found himself subpoenaed to testify at the trial of Kelly Rindfleisch, his deputy chief of staff back in Milwaukee, who is facing four felony counts relating to illegal electioneering on his behalf. There are several sentences of which no politician likes to be either subject or object. One is any sentence containing "messy divorce." Another one is any sentence referring to the "former aides and associates." To wit:

Her charges grew from a two-year secret John Doe investigation that's focused on former aides and associates of Walker.

This latest development presents Walker with an interesting array of options, none of which is politically palatable.

He can testify, which no politician with plans for the future wants to do.

He can plead the Fifth. (Welcome to Fox News analyst Scott Walker!)

He can fight the subpoena and string the story out for even longer while he tries to burnish his national credentials.

Or he can cut some kind of deal for this testimony and appear both corrupt and disloyal, since Ms. Rindfleisch stands to do jail time, and since half of Walker's old political operation is on the witness list for her trial, and since there still remains the ongoing trial of Kevin Kavanaugh, who stands accused of embezzling $42,000 literally from the widows and orphans of the war dead, and especially since Walker is also on the witness list for the upcoming trial of Timothy Russell, another alleged embezzler and former deputy chief of staff and, reputedly, the guy who knows where all the bodies are buried in Walker's political career. It appears that, in the words of Lamar Parmentel, the crooked New Orleans lawyer in The Big Easy, Walker's old office in Milwaukee was "a marvelous environment for coincidence."

In other words, if Walker's got plans to go national, he's going to have to do it while riding every ride in Depositionland. Best of luck, Scott.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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