Of late, Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to run their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, has taken to the electric Twitter machine to snark at Hillary Rodham Clinton on what he says is the state of her political corruption. This would be funny enough coming from a guy whose entire political career has been built on penny-ante grifting that has landed several of his trusted aides in the sneezer.

However, as The Guardian points out today, Walker's sanctimonious tweeting has gone from funny to drop-dead hilarious.

In a case that is the subject of a petition currently in front of the US supreme court, five Wisconsin prosecutors carried out a deep investigation into what they suspected were criminal campaign-finance violations by the campaign committee of Scott Walker, Wisconsin governor and former Republican presidential candidate. Known as the "John Doe investigation", the inquiry has been a lightning rod for bitter disputes between conservatives and progressives for years.

You may recall that, in shutting down the John Doe investigation, the Wisconsin state supreme court—which has its own problems, as we shall see—ordered that all the work product of the lengthy probe be destroyed.

Oops. One file box was behind the sofa, I guess.

Among the documents are several court filings from the case, as well as hundreds of pages of email exchanges obtained by the prosecutors under subpoena. The emails involve conversations concerning Walker, his top aides, conservative lobbyists, and leading Republican figures such as Karl Rove and the chair of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus. Trump also appears in the files, making a donation of $15,000 following a personal visit from Walker to the Republican nominee's Fifth Avenue headquarters. In addition to Trump, many of the most powerful and wealthy rightwing figures in the nation crop up in the files: from Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone, hedge-fund manager Paul Singer and Las Vegas casino giant Sheldon Adelson, to magnate Carl Icahn. "I got $1m from John Menard today," Walker says in one email, referring to the billionaire owner of the home improvement chain Menards.

We pause here for a brief public service announcement from Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy:

"Independent expenditures do not lead to, or create the appearance of, quid pro quo corruption."

This has been a public-service announcement on behalf of Americans Abroad In La-La Land. We now continue with our regularly scheduled programming.

As the material leaked to The Guardian makes quite clear, it took a sophisticated network of financiers, plutocrats, dark money lords, and independent ratfckers to enable Walker to turn Wisconsin into the banana republic it is today. The case of the state's supreme court is a fine example. Alas, the state is one of those that has attached itself to the Second Worst Idea In American Politics, the elected judiciary.

In 2011, a conservative hard-bar named David Prosser was running again, and his re-election was central to the effort by Wisconsin Republicans to safeguard Walker's agenda from the meddling legalities that have dogged the governor ever since he ran for student body president at Marquette. (One of the problems facing Prosser that year was an accusation that he had tried to throttle a fellow justice named Mary Ann Walsh Bradley.) Walker needed Prosser, and Prosser needed Walker and his deep-pocketed puppeteers. Via the Journal Sentinel:

The John Doe files also provide new insight into the extensive efforts made by allies of Scott Walker to help a conservative member of the Wisconsin supreme court, David Prosser, hang onto his seat in a 2011 re-election. A network of like-minded groups and campaigners channeled $3.5m in undisclosed corporate funds to pay for TV and radio ads backing the judge. The push was seen as vital, the documents disclose, as a means of retaining the rightwing majority of the court and thereby preserving the anti-union measures introduced by Walker. "If we lose [Justice Prosser], the Walker agenda is toast," one ally writes in an email sent around to the governor's chief of staff and several conservative lobbyists.

Punchline, coming. Heads-up!

In 2015, Justice Prosser refused to recuse himself from a case in which the state supreme court sat in judgment over the John Doe investigation, despite the fact that the investigation focused on precisely the same network of lobbying groups and donors that had helped him hang onto his seat. The judge joined a majority of four conservative justices who voted to terminate the investigation and destroy all the documents now leaked to the Guardian. Prosser told the Guardian that four years had passed since his re-election before he joined the decision to close the John Doe investigation, over which time any potential conflict of interest had faded.

I think Anthony Kennedy might be the only sentient primate who buys that one.

Anyway, as the kidz say, read the whole thing. The Guardian helpfully links to the e-mails it obtained, just so you can see how democracy in Wisconsin was sold at auction.

One of the checks made out to the group, for $10,000, came from a financier called G Frederick Kasten Jr. In the subject line of the check, Kasten had written in his own hand: "Because Scott Walker asked".

Well, that's the way it goes.

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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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