Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) on Saturday brushed off a secret probe into coordination between his gubernatorial campaign and former staff in his county executive’s office as “old news.”
This week more than 27,000 emails and 434 pages of search warrants related to the ongoing investigation were released to the public. Walker said in an interview with the Washington Post that those documents revealed no material that could damage him politically.
“This is an old news story,” he told the Post. “Many of the ones that have been highlighted of late have actually been in the [Milwaukee] Journal-Sentinel and other places several years ago.”
“The bottom line is I’m probably the most scrutinized public official in America,” he added, citing the 2012 recall election he weathered and another investigation by the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office that ended last year.
Only one of Walker’s former staffers, Kelly Rindfleisch, has been charged in the probe. The former deputy chief of staff was convicted of doing campaign work for a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor on government time.
So far nothing in the documents has linked Walker to legal misconduct. The juiciest bits of the document dump have been emails circulated among the governor’s aides, including several racist jokes and a scheme to get rid of an employee who once worked as a thong model.
