Federal appeals court stays ruling halting Doe probe into Walker recall
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Less than 24 hours after a federal judge halted a probe into conservative groups and the campaign of Gov. Scott Walker, an appeals court blocked that ruling — allowing prosecutors to keep material they have gathered in the case.
The three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago provided a means for U.S. District Rudolph Randa in Milwaukee to reissue his preliminary injunction stopping the investigation, but it said he cannot order prosecutors to destroy evidence they have collected so far.
Also Wednesday, Randa ruled a coalition of five media groups could intervene in the case in its attempt to unseal hundreds of pages of court filings that have been blacked out. He gave all sides a week to object to making that material public.
Randa's earlier decision, issued late Tuesday, essentially cleared conservatives of illegal campaigning in Wisconsin's 2011 and 2012 recall races by saying the long-running John Doe investigation into campaign spending and fundraising appeared to violate the Wisconsin Club for Growth's free speech rights. Randa's ruling — rated as no less than stunning by Democrats and Republicans alike — called for the destruction of the evidence in the case and seemingly eliminated a key obstacle to the GOP governor's 2014 re-election campaign and 2016 presidential hopes.
But the appeals panel stayed Randa's order stopping the investigation, saying he did not have the authority to do that because prosecutors had already appealed an earlier decision in the case. Randa could issue his injunction only if he certified the appeal as frivolous, and he never ruled on that point — though he had recently written he was inclined to believe it is frivolous.
Read more: http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/halt-to-john-doe-probe-lifts-obstacle-to-scott-walker-re-election-bid-b99264574z1-258293621.html
Nice try, Scotty.
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