On Sept. 14, 2011, the American KGB struck in Wisconsin. Police officers working for the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office raided a house. One of the homeowners was forced to run down the stairs naked to keep the police from smashing the door of the house in and her partner was pulled from the shower, presumably naked as well.
The two were held at gunpoint as armed officers swarmed the house, ripping it apart.
What horrible crime had been committed?
Cindy Archer, the woman whose house was attacked, was an employee of Scott Walker.
Ms. Archer was a long-time employee of Mr. Walker when he first was county executive for Milwaukee and then as governor. She helped draft the very popular public-employee labor union reforms, which became the signature achievement of Mr. Walker’s first term as governor.
Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm spearheaded the investigation, which began as a probe into the theft of charitable funds from the county executive’s office. That matter was quickly solved, but at the hands of Mr. Chisholm, it soon morphed into almost anything he could use against the Republican governor.
The far-left-wing prosecutor began to issue what are known as “John Doe” subpoenas. These subpoenas require the production of documents and in a startling abuse of power, Mr. Chisholm’s office told the recipients of the subpoenas they could not even tell their lawyers about the subpoena.
Mr. Chisholm’s wife was a union shop steward at a Milwaukee school and, according to published reports, was incredibly angry at Mr. Walker’s successful efforts to roll back the abuses of public employee unions. This apparently led her husband to begin the political persecution of Mr. Walker and anyone associated with him.
The DA’s office in Milwaukee has been described as a hyper-partisan office and the DA has taken his partisanship to the point of shredding the Constitution for political gain: On Monday, Nov. 1, 2010, the day before Mr. Walker was to face liberal Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barnett at the polls, Mr. Chisholm’s office raided Mr. Walker’s Milwaukee office and the homes of other “John Doe” targets.
But it isn’t partisan if a Democrat does it right before an election, is it?
In Mr. Chisholm’s favorite nation, the old Soviet Union, black cars would roll up to houses in the middle of the night. There would be the dreaded knock on the door as people cowered and prayed the KGB wasn’t coming for them.
Politicians have always told us that kind of thing could not happen in America.
It did happen to Ms. Archer and other people who exercised their rights as Americans to work for candidates they believed in and advocated ideas they supported. Ms. Archer wants her day in court against Mr. Chisholm.
As a lawyer and a former prosecutor, I can say Mr. Chisholm is a disgrace to the profession of law. Because of the incredible power the prosecutor’s office has, prosecutors are held to the highest standard of any lawyer. The job of a prosecutor is not to seek convictions but to seek justice. It is never to misuse their powerful office for political gain.
Mr. Chisholm should be disbarred and then spend a very long time in prison for what he did. There is an old adage: “If you can’t be a good example, at least be a horrible warning.”
The State of Wisconsin needs to make certain that John Chisholm is a horrible warning and that no prosecutor will ever again abuse citizens the way he did.
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