POLITICS

Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel contradicts self, says voter fraud probe is open

Patrick Marley

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MADISON - Under fire from conservatives, Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel said this week an investigation into voter fraud remained open, contradicting comments he made hours earlier that the probe had been closed.

Schimel suggested his investigators may yet review more than 100 hours of undercover video shot by Project Veritas Action, a group run by conservative activist James O’Keefe.

“It’s not the end of it,” the Republican attorney general said Thursday on “The Mark Belling Show” on WISN-AM (1130).

Schimel’s office released a memo this week from an investigator saying he found no violations of Wisconsin laws. Just hours before he claimed the investigation had not been shut down, Schimel told the Wisconsin Radio Network the memo had been released because the investigation was closed.

Schimel spokesman Johnny Koremenos on Friday said the memo had been released in error and declined to answer other questions.

At issue is a series of videos O'Keefe released leading up to last year's presidential election that O'Keefe claims reveal a voter fraud scheme and other crimes. At the time, Schimel's office released a statement saying the video showed “apparent violations of the law."

The newly released memo appeared to shut down the investigation, with the head of Schimel's criminal litigation unit, Roy Korte, writing there was no suggestion that any Wisconsin laws had been broken.

That elicited a strong reaction from O'Keefe, who on Thursday released a short video telling Schimel, "We should investigate you and you should lose your job."

Belling raised similar concerns about how Schimel handled the matter in his interview with him. Schimel responded by saying the investigation was not closed.

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"I appreciate the work that groups like Project Veritas do to expose corruption and criminal conspiracies, but the war of words that has sparked up in the last 24 hours is incited by fake news, Mark," Schimel said.

But hours earlier, Schimel described the investigation as closed in his interview with the Wisconsin Radio Network.

"We didn’t seek to shame anyone but when we do an investigation, that is after we close it, it is a public record and therefore when members of the media wanted to see the results of the investigation they were able to get their hands on that," he said.

"We did take it seriously and looked at this to see whether there was something we could pursue and just concluded that there’s not anything that provided itself as a viable investigatory lead."

The Journal Sentinel began requesting documents about the investigation in October, but was told they could not be released because it was ongoing. On Jan. 18, Assistant Attorney General Paul Ferguson told reporters for the newspaper that he expected the investigation to be done soon.

This week, Ferguson released Korte's Jan. 31 memo and said Friday that the investigation had been closed. But Schimel's spokesman later said the investigation was ongoing and the memo had been released in error.

Korte reviewed two videos shot by Veritas of Democratic activist Scott Foval that have not been released publicly. An attorney for Veritas in October offered a third video of Foval to Schimel's Department of Justice if the agency would agree to allow Veritas to blur the face of one of the people involved in the undercover operation.

No one from Schimel's office got back to Veritas over the next six months, according to O'Keefe.

The Veritas attorney had been in touch with Paul Connell, who at the time was DOJ's senior counsel and is now Schimel's top deputy. O'Keefe described Connell as "generally uninterested."

Schimel told Belling he didn't know the third video was available until this week and had now requested it. He said allowing Veritas to blur the person's face would protect the person from becoming "a target for every angry yahoo out there."

Schimel also noted that O'Keefe claims to have more than 100 hours of footage of liberal organizer Robert Creamer of Democracy Partners.

"We're going to be interested in that," Schimel told Belling, though it is unclear how much of the footage might have been shot in Wisconsin.

Schimel suggested his agents have not interviewed Foval or others.

“Until we see all the video, we don’t have that ability," he said.

Schimel complained that the Journal Sentinel had not sought comment from his office for a story this week, even though the newspaper repeatedly did so. When Belling noted a quote from Schimel's spokesman in the story, Schimel said his spokesman was busy when first contacted and wasn't given enough time to respond before the story was posted online.

O'Keefe made his name in 2009 with videos that brought down the community organizing group ACORN. He later agreed to pay a $100,000 legal settlement to an ACORN employee and in 2010 pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor as part of another undercover operation.

O'Keefe has performed most of his sting operations on liberals, but at times has gone after conservatives, including former Wisconsin Senate President Mike Ellis (R-Neenah).