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Anyone following the Scott Walker secret email system story?

I don't know if any of these will hurt Walker's chances as a presidential candidate, I suspect they will but there's a recent Politico article that says this is much ado about nothing, but like I said, a number of them are pretty embarrassing.
A racist email:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/highly-racist-email-forward-found-in-scott-walker-investigat
Another racist email:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/scott-walkers-former-deputy-chief-of-staff-was-queen-of-the
A dismissive email about a woman who died at a mental health facility that states, "no one cares about crazy people"
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scott-walker-aide-nobody-cares-crazy-people
A series of emails that discuss "caging" Wisconsin voters
http://www.progressive.org/emails-suggest-walker-aides-ran-illegal-vote-rigging-scheme
 
That's it? All those show is that Scott Walker worked with Republicans.
 
lol, Comic Sans

I'd be curious how many posters have gotten those forwards. I know I've heard the dog joke.
 
It's bizarre that some emails in bad taste are getting the media focus rather than deliberately setting up a separate email system. Multiple staffers have already been convicted so maybe that's already been addressed. When Palin first burst on the scene seemed ridiculous that she was using personal hotmail and gmail accounts to conduct official state business. There's usually a reason you'd choose to use non-standard systems to conduct official business. Secret or open, public or private, seems sloppy to document any shady or illegal behavior thereby creating potential evidence. Christie's handled Bridgegate poorly and that doesn't reflect well on his leadership skills, but I still doubt they'll ever find any documentation that lays out a master plan to tie Sandy aid to pliable/favored pols. God forbid they'd be that stupid and incompetent. Christie and Walker need to seriously upgrade their staffs long before they can dream about becoming President.
 
Exactly. They sent around offensive email forwards I imagine a large percentage of white people have gotten. So what? It's insight into a world I'm not in but nothing groundbreaking.

Wouldn't be surprised if the secret email thing is common. Definitely the Hotmail or Gmail or whatever thing.
 
Petraeus was CIA Director and he got popped by using draft emails to his girlfriend on a shared email account, so there aren't foolproof ways to avoid online electronic trails. No doubt that personal email accounts are widely used for official business. I'm interested in what the "secret email system" entailed.
 
PhDeac said:
Exactly. They sent around offensive email forwards I imagine a large percentage of white people have gotten. So what? It's insight into a world I'm not in but nothing groundbreaking.

Wouldn't be surprised if the secret email thing is common. Definitely the Hotmail or Gmail or whatever thing.
Click to expand...

There's one email where a top staffer is ranting about illegal aliens and Walker tells her "don't hold back". Another where it turns out a doctor who was doing a good job at a county hospital had also worked as a thong underwear model. Walker said something like "get rid of her ASAP". These things might be embarrassing but more problematic is he had a secret email system set up to try and get around the Wisconsin open records law, which says even campaign business done with personal email accounts are subject to, at the same time he was promising transparency. Also, he said he had a strict policy that no staffers would do campaign work while working on the public's dime, something that had gotten previous campaign workers in legal trouble.
 
Whether he's indicted or not, he isn't a lock to win re-election this fall. If he loses, his presidential bid is over.
 
This article says the emails that have been released are not Walker's major concern. The big concern involves a second John Doe investigation that has to do with his recall.
It's Not Just Those Emails. Here's The Secret Investigation That Should Worry Scott Walker.
The recently released emails shed new light on the activities of Walker and his aides. Walker had insisted that staffers in his county executive office had been prohibited from doing political work on county time, yet these records show the opposite was true. The future governor and his underlings set up a private WiFi network to communicate with staff on his 2010 gubernatorial campaign, and county staffers used private laptops so that their campaign-related work wouldn't appear on their county computers. The emails also show the degree to which Walker's staff (whose salaries were funded by taxpayers) worked to get him elected governor while on the county clock. As Mary Bottari of PRWatch notes, Kelly Rindfleisch, a former Walker aide who was convicted of campaigning on county time, sent and received a whopping 3,486 emails from representatives of Friends of Scott Walker, most during normal work hours. (Walker, through his spokesman, declined to comment about the emails.)
Click to expand...
The John Doe probe began in August of 2012 and is examining possible "illegal campaign coordination between (name redacted), a campaign committee, and certain special interest groups," according to an unsealed filing in the case. Sources told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the redacted committee is the Walker campaign, Friends of Scott Walker. Campaign filings show that Walker spent $86,000 on legal fees in the second half of 2013.

A John Doe is similar to a grand jury investigation, but in front of a judge rather than a jury, and is conducted under strict secrecy orders. Wisconsin's 4th Circuit Court of Appeals unsealed some documents last week as it rejected a challenge to the probe filed by three of the unnamed "special interest groups" that had received subpoenas in the investigation and issued a ruling allowing the investigation to move forward.

The special interest groups under investigation include Wisconsin Club for Growth, which is led by a top Walker advisor and friend, R.J. Johnson, and which spent at least $9.1 million on "issue ads" supporting Walker and legislative Republicans during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections. Another group is Citizens for a Strong America, which was entirely funded by Wisconsin Club for Growth in 2011 and 2012 and acted as a conduit for funding other groups that spent on election issue ads; CSA's president is John Connors, who previously worked for David Koch's Americans for Prosperity and is part of the leadership at the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity (publishers of Watchdog.org and Wisconsin Reporter). Other groups reportedly receiving subpoenas include AFP, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and the Republican Governors Association.

Unlike the first John Doe probe, this newer one seems to have Walker's political operation in its sights. This ought to have Walker and his aides far more concerned than some old emails from his Milwaukee County days.
Click to expand...
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/02/scott-walker-secret-emails-john-doe-recall
 
Scott Walker needs to talk to Phil Gramm about how it feels to raise a lot of money for the presidential campaign and not be able to even sniff the oval office. Don't wast your time and other people's money, dude.
 
PhDeac said:
Exactly. They sent around offensive email forwards I imagine a large percentage of white people have gotten. So what? It's insight into a world I'm not in but nothing groundbreaking.
Click to expand...

i like this post
 
Pretty interesting interview of Walker by Chris Wallace on Fox today. Wallace showed an email from one of Walker's flunkies saying she used the secret email system to converse frequently with Walker. When asked if he sued the system, Wallace declined to answer twice, which Wallace readily pointed out. Walker's position is that this is already a closed issue, so he won't comment. If it's a settled issue, why is Fox asking about it and pointing out his evasiveness? Pretty clear that a separate email system wasn't set up just to forward jokes.

Conventional wisdom is that Walker is the biggest beneficiary of Christie's stumbles. Personally I think Jeb benefits more. Walker's a hero to many on the right, but he's not the sharpest guy, isn't charismatic, and lacks gravitas. The Kochs propped him up, but he's also lucky that the Dem legislature panicked and fled to Illinois when they realized they didn't have the votes to block legislation. Non-partisans can't spin that as principled and heroic while simultaneously trashing Cruz for the government shutdown. Elections matter and if you don't have the votes you can't pass legislation. Like Christie, Walker still has to answer some uncomfortable questions. If he survives and gets re-elected, he'll be that much stronger. Dems need to let it play out and avoid overreaching and thereby elevating a hack again.
 
Although Jeb may have been the best POTUS of the entire Bush family he has no chance in 2016. If Hillary runs, the campaign is very simple- Which do you prefer the peace and prosperity of a Clinton Administration or the war and recession of a Bush Administration?
 
RJKarl said:
Although Jeb may have been the best POTUS of the entire Bush family he has no chance in 2016. If Hillary runs, the campaign is very simple- Which do you prefer the peace and prosperity of a Clinton Administration or the war and recession of a Bush Administration?
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RJKampaignManager
 
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