This is the third part in our ongoing investigative series examining alleged cases of political persecution in Wisconsin. The first article examining a frightening political witch hunt against conservatives can be seen here. The second –investigating the partisan District Attorney behind the attacks can be seen here.
It’s been reported that dozens of Wisconsin conservatives have been subjected to unwarranted police raids in their homes in the early morning, theft of personal e-mails, wide-ranging subpoenas, harassment of colleagues, and stern warnings to not engage in a discussion about what had happened.
This kind of silencing of political opposition one would expect to hear in Communist countries, but it was happening right here in America. And it’s been happening for years: The first so-called “John Doe” investigation which granted broad power to a partisan Democrat District Attorney was opened in 2010.
It begs the question: Where has the media been on this major news story in the last five years?
At first blush, one could argue that the fact that conservatives were being forced to remain silent about these police raids would have prevented any media knowledge of what was going on. There were “stern commands to remain silent and tell no one about what had occurred,” the National Review reported just last week.
The media however, were fully aware of what was happening in Wisconsin.
As the initial report indicates, knowledge of the harassing investigations was provided to journalists through “slanderous and selective leaks to sympathetic media.” In other words, the media had knowledge that Republicans were being targeted but were fully on board with what was happening.
Further, some media outlets in Wisconsin were using the process to help push the narrative that conservatives were indeed criminals. Watchdog Wisconsin demonstrates a prime example of this. In this example, the Democrat District Attorney used the “John Doe” laws to issue broad-ranging subpoenas against his political opponents. The media, in this case The Cap Times, would in turn use that information as proof that the individual(s) in question were part of a “group facing criminal liability” in the investigation. Subsequently, those same individuals were under a gag order based on the laws, and could do nothing to defend themselves against allegations being reported in the media.
The assertion that a person was “facing criminal liability” was false, even through the admission of a special prosecutor in the investigations. But the media had found a journalistic loophole, reporting it as fact and knowing full well the people being accused couldn’t fight back.
Perhaps even more disconcerting is the case of a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who had been present at one of the dramatic police raids in 2011. Cindy Archer relayed a harrowing story to the National Review – a dozen police officers pounding on her door in the early morning hours, a battering ram, running to the door half-clothed, armed agents rushing inside, and pleading to spare the lives of her barking dogs.
Then there was this bit of information – Archer reported that, “She looked outside and saw a person who appeared to be a reporter. Someone had tipped him off.”
That reporter was Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and it raises questions about who was using the media to help further the slander of conservative targets in this case.
Right Wisconsin reports:
Marley’s appearance at what was supposed to be a secret raid raises the possibility that the Journal Sentinel was tipped off by someone inside law enforcement. That would violate a state statute, as well as Wisconsin’s controversial John Doe law – the law that Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm has invoked twice in four years to launch what are supposed to be secret investigations of conservative activists.
Another reporter claims that he was actually the one to tip off Marley, and that he received no inside knowledge of the raids. The home “was being raided in plain sight on the east side of Madison,” he explained.
The problem with that however, is that the reporter then relayed, what from the outside would clearly be a crime story, to a colleague who is a political reporter, suggesting knowledge of why the home was being raided.
As Right Wisconsin reports, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel just so-happened to be “Johnny on the spot in the notorious John Doe investigation.”
Liberal journalists managed to be “on the spot” in Wisconsin as a police raid of a conservative’s home was taking place. Yet, here we are, four years after the raid of Archer’s home, nine full days after the National Review’s initial bombshell report on these heinous, politically motivated actions in Wisconsin, and not a word of it has been covered by the national media.
Is it not national news simply because it happened to the “other” party?
Stay tuned for more in our investigative series examining, Is There a Frightening Political Witch Hunt Going on in Wisconsin?
