Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is doing some good digging into the Milwaukee connection to the phony “voter fraud” claims used to help push U.S. Attorneys out of their job in the Bush Administration’s political purge/disassembly of the now-ironically named Department of Justice.
As well, a recent, and unusual, overturned case in Wisconsin’s Seventh Court of Appeals is similarly adding fresh fuel to the insidious GOP “voter fraud” scam at the heart of the outrageous abuse of power by the current Executive Branch. And today, Senators on the hill are asking new questions about it to Alberto Gonzales.
We’ve covered various elements of the invidious and baseless GOP “voter fraud” scheme in New Mexico (see here, here, here and here, for just a few examples) and touched on Washington State as well. But Bice jumps in with new details on the same scam in Milwaukee, which has now led to an official Congressional letter of inquiry on the matter sent today to Gonzales from Senators Leahy, Schumer, Kohl, Feingold, Feinstein, and Whitehouse.
For weeks, it was unclear who whined to the White House last year that not enough voter fraud cases were being prosecuted in Milwaukee.
Now we know.
The state Republican Party went straight to the top in its efforts to make voter fraud an issue in Wisconsin.
Sources tell No Quarter that Rick Wiley, then the executive director of the state GOP, directed a staffer in 2005 to prepare a 30-page report on election abuses in Wisconsin so Wiley could pass it along to a top White House official.
That document, entitled “Fraud in Wisconsin 2004: A Timeline/Summary,” turned up last week in the horde of White House and U.S. Justice Department records released by the House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating the firing of eight U.S. attorneys
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In late 2005, U.S. Attorney Steve Biskupic, a Bush appointee, announced that his probe found no evidence of a conspiracy to steal the 2004 election here.
Was Wiley – or his boss at the time, then-Chairman Rick Graber – hoping the Bush team would ax Biskupic, as it did the other top federal prosecutors last year? .
Read on for more and see the letter from Leahy for more details on the heels of a surprise Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision that issued an order immediately overturning a case brought by Biskupic against Georgia Thompson, an aide to Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Jim Doyle. Just in time for the ’06 election we might add. (It didn’t help; Doyle won anyway.)
The basis for the unusual appellate court decision was that the evidence used to convict Thompson on charges related to voting irregularities was virtually non-existent — leading the senators to question what sort of pressure was brought on Biskupic to bring the charges in the first place.
This is your government. On steroids. In the form of the Bush Administration Gone Wild. And it’s got to not only be stopped, it needs to be: Pushed. Back. Down.
If serious accountability is not brought (and we mean more than simply pushing out a pawn like Gonzales) the bar will have been forever lowered as far as what sort of outrageous, un-American Executive Branch overreach is tolerable in this country.
I hope to hell that somewhere in the bowels of Congress someone is preparing Articles of Impeachment.
(Hat-tip to BRAD BLOG Commenter “Dredd” for the Leahy letter.)
Brad … you are beginning to sound like a “lefty” … all I said is that the bushie loyalists are fascists … for heavens sake. 🙂
My apologies, Dredd 🙂
Brad, one of the hugest stories, the DOJ attorney scandal, is intersecting with you. That’s huge, go for it!!!
btw…NONE of the progressive blogs have Anna Nicole’s kids father story or Imus. ALL the rightwing corporate blogs have these stories plastered all over, and ANBCBSNNX, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc…
So, we are smart, and we know what’s going on now. Keep your eye on the ball!!!!!!!!!!!!!
btw??? Limbaugh and Hannity somehow devoted their shows to twisting the Imus thing into a “Sharpton/Jesse Jackson” thing. ESPN and ANBCBSNNX are sticking to the story, even though it’s not news.
I think the news is Gonzales subpoena, troops being extended, the attorney scandal, the forged Niger document, health care, and e-vote fraud.
WE KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON IN THE CONTROLLED CORPORATE MAINSTREAM MEDIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, and Hannity? Complete with black callers and everything! The non-existent black “conservative” Sean Hannity fans! That don’t exist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The “infomercial” has begun!
“Quick! Let’s bump the important stuff out of the news! Also, let’s twist the Imus thing into bashing Sharpton and Jesse Jackson! Quick! Get all the fake black actors to call into the show! You know, the people we hire to sound black? They’re great! They are paid to call in and sound like MANY different types of people! WOW! Black conservatives bashing the black Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Our racist braindead idiot fans will LOVE this show today! We’ll tell them Imus is a liberal, too!!!!!!!!!!!”
On April 17, the real stonewalling begins…
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Great news from my old childhood newspaper. It was just the Journal then, the Sentinel was a separate entity.
How much more of this stuff must come out before something, beyond hearings, is done?
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EdNSted
I love it!
Big Dan
This is the NSA. We know where you’ve been!
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Perfectly put, Brad! Thanks!
Great reporting as always. You make the blogosphere proud.
…a case brought by Biskupic against Georgia Thompson, an aide to Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Jim Doyle. Just in time for the ’06 election we might add. (It didn’t help; Doyle won anyway.)
“Just in time”? The investigation was announced in Oct 2005 (in cooperation with the Dem State AG and Dem county DA, one might add); the indictment was Jan 2006, and the trial verdict was delivered in June.
What did happen “just in time” for the election was sentencing in Sept 2006.
Well. Gonzalez has brought this upon himself with his dismal handling of the Eight Men Out, but once the facts are in we will see that with Biskupic, the Dems have bupkis.
Just for starters, the theory is what, exactly – that he brought a weak case in January with the idea of risking repudiation and humiliation with a “Not Guilty” verdict in June? If he knew the case was weak, he should have brought it later. Or, if he believed in his case, question his judgment but not his motives.
And if the case was so weak, why did a jury convict? Why did the State AG (a Dem on her way to a fall primary defeat) release this:
The verdict in this case reflects the work of investigators and prosecutors whose only interest in this matter was to obtain and present evidence of corrupt conduct in our government. I am satisfied that the jury based its verdict on the strength of the evidence. Now that the jury has done its duty, it is the duty of the legislature to do its job and enact laws that will remove the influence of money on politics and decision-making at all levels of government.
Not exactly a howl of outrage from someone whose office had been involved in the investigation.
That said, I can’t explain the gap in perception between, on one hand, the four senior attorneys who advanced this case, the trial judge, and the jury versus the Appeals Court judges. One guess I read – Chicago judges see much more ghastly corruption cases every day.
Regardless – IMHO, on this one, the Reps will walk.
Have you forgotten the pile of FBI files found in the Clinton White House? Have you forgotten the use of the IRS to harass non-profits which the Clintons viewed as unfriendly? If this is all true, it is nasty, to be sure. But I don’t think the bar has moved much here.
Nick Kasoff
The Thug Report
Remember Mark Crispin Miller on C-span talking about the connections between the voting fraud and the Christian organizations. Well I think this is going to result in a “trifecta” of sorts.
That woman who is “taking the fifth” before ever seeing a courtroom is connected with a school for Christian lawyers run by Pat Robertson.
Is “Attorneygate” going to connect voting fraud, attorney purges, and the Christian Dominionist movement?
I’m reading Chris Hedges, “American Fascists”, and it includes much about this incredibly creepy movement. He covers some things about our friend Blackwell and the voting fraud in Ohio. Don’t read this book unless you’re willing to lose sleep!
Brad,
I’m having trouble with the link to the Leahy letter page. Is there another link we can go to to get what was in it?
Hoping that I helped you and Dredd both find Bice’s column earlier when I posted a link to it in the comments of the earlier thread here.
It really does seem to be that each day this attorney scandal is getting more and more linked with election integrity issues! I remember speculating that might be the case in a letter I sent to you back on January 13th after news of Carol Lam’s firing first broke.
I’m with you that I think the more things start to unravel here, it is looking like the articles of impeachment need to be dealt! Just the violating of the rules on maintaining records of mails and communications being defied should be good enough to yank these guys out!
Cancel that. The letter from Leahy link is now working. They must have been shutting down their email server to do “backups”, eh? 🙂
When Fascists hijack the United States Department of Justice,…
Now, I wonder if this has anything to do with the USApurgegate? Nah, I really know that it has everything to do with USApurgegate. It also has to do with what the “Loyal Bushies,” such as U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic, were doing and why some of them are being retained. You know, not exactly “Voter Fraud,” but possibly “Election Fraud.” Because for this Administration it is all about “Voter Fraud (read: voting while black),” as apposed to “Election Fraud (read: rigging elections),” which they are not so opposed to (see Florida, Ohio, New Hampshire and now Wisconsin).
http://tulitalks.blogspot.com/2...elievable.html
Here is a VERY interesting New York Times editorial about the Georgia Thompson case, suggesting that Mr. Biskupic threw Ms. Thompson into jail in order to preserve his own job by influencing the election:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041807K.shtml
The editorial also debunks the claim, repeated in the blog entry above, that Thompson was a “Doyle aide.”