Six years after the supreme court opened the floodgates on money in politics with its Citizens United decision, most Americans are well aware how broken our campaign finance system has become. Eighty-four percent of us say there’s too much money in politics, according to a New York Times poll, and two out of three say the wealthy have more influence than everyone else.

Leaked documents reveal secretive influence of corporate cash on politics Read more

Voters understand that intuitively. But rarely is it possible to actually see inside the inner workings of our rigged campaign finance system and observe how the wealthy and powerful exploit it for their own benefit.

That’s what 1,500 pages worth of leaked documents, obtained by the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington, allow us to do. They reveal internal emails that show connections between Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker, his aides and wealthy donors – including Donald Trump. The contents are both depressingly predictable and outrageous.

A union-backed recall bid vaulted Walker to national prominence in 2011, after he championed a notorious law stripping public sector unions of their collective bargaining rights. That successful campaign would go on to be a centerpiece of his 2016 presidential campaign, and would probably be again if he runs in 2020.

The documents comprise evidence compiled by prosecutors in a “John Doe investigation” into the Walker campaign and its network of allies looking into potential campaign finance violations. The focus of the “John Doe” inquiry (so named to protect subjects’ anonymity while it was determined whether charges would be pressed) began in 2011, as Walker fought for his governorship in the recall election. In 2015 the Wisconsin supreme court stopped the investigation, saying the prosecutors had focused on people and groups “wholly innocent of any wrongdoing”.

In 2011, the Walker campaign needed money fast and his team got to work. Kate Doner, the campaign’s main fundraiser at the time, laid out her plan in an email that reads like a script from a bad movie. “Corporations,” she wrote. “Go heavy after them to give.” And then: “Take Koch’s money. Get on a plane to Vegas and sit down with Sheldon Adelson. Ask him for $1m now.”

Apparently Doner knows how to get results because a few months later, Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate, wired in $200,000 for the cause.

For a state-level election in Wisconsin, the campaign attracted a surprising number of national tycoons: hedge-fund billionaire Stephen Cohen gave $1m, Home Depot’s Ken Langone chipped in $25,000, while hedge funder Paul Singer ponied up $250,000. “Paul Singer: Grab him,” Doner wrote in another email.

The most stomach-churning example in the 1,500 pages is Harold Simmons, the owner of NL Industries – historically a major manufacturer of lead paint. The company faced millions of dollars in lawsuits over alleged lead poisoning of children.



Simmons gave $750,000 in a series of payments to the third-party group prosecutors suspected of illegally coordinating with the Walker and Republican state senators’ campaigns. The donations came as Walker and state senators were fighting the recall effort, and around the same time the Republican-controlled state senate took steps to pass legislation to effectively grant the industry legal immunity from lead poisoning claims (a federal court later struck the legislation down). To me, that looks like corporate pay-for-play.

Walker knew Simmons’ money was tainted. Campaign adviser Keith Gilkes, in an email to Walker, warned that the billionaire had successfully avoided paying millions in medical treatment for children who suffered from lead poisoning in Milwaukee, among other “red flags”.

Politicians and their allies go to great lengths to hide their campaign finance dealings from public view – in this case they almost succeeded. David Prosser was one of the four conservative judges who approved the July 2015 ruling that ended the John Doe investigation.

Some of the very emails Prosser wanted to destroy show how Walker’s allies tried to secure his re-election to the supreme court – an outcome necessary to maintain its conservative bent and thus defend Walker’s agenda.

The influence money can buy has become an animating force in this year’s presidential election, fueling the unlikely candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Both rejected the need to collect money from larger donors and corporations, Sanders with his $27 contributions and Trump with his personal wealth.

“When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do,” Trump, who is now soliciting contributions, once said of political donations.

He surfaces in the John Doe documents for contributing $15,000 to the third-party group suspected of coordinating with Walker’s campaign, following a 45-minute meeting with Walker at Trump’s Fifth Avenue office.

Trump may be an opportunistic charlatan, but he’s tapping in to something real in voters. It’s a rage born of disenchantment with today’s democratic process. And these documents suggest that anger is valid.

The US supreme court is expected to decide whether to intervene in the John Doe case later this month but it’s unlikely to undo the problem it created. Exposing its injustice is a good first step.