Wisconsin’s Shame -- The ‘John Doe’ Investigations

From National Review:

Moreover, it’s now apparent that the John Doe investigators dumped thousands of privileged messages obtained during previous John Doe investigations into a searchable database — called “Relativity” — that prosecutors and investigators used to review Doe documents. Investigators kept stumbling across privileged documents, and even the hardened partisans understood that the lack of adequate privilege review (undertaken by a so-called “taint team”) could threaten the investigation.

Nor were documents confined to the Relativity database. Deposition testimony reveals that investigators passed around flash drives containing subpoenaed information, including confidential financial information, storing those drives in desk drawers, pasting sensitive e-mails into Word documents, and accumulating records without any system for organizing evidence.

In their own court filing, the John Doe investigators deny wrongdoing, assuring the court that they didn’t review privileged information and that their review of documents seized through the expansive subpoenas of Internet-service providers was entirely proper and not prohibited by any court. The investigators strongly object to any claims of wrongdoing in the investigation and continue to maintain that they were investigating potentially illegal behavior, not First Amendment–protected speech.

To this date, multiple raid targets don’t yet possess a complete list of items taken, and they believe that the investigators failed to properly inventory all seized assets. Moreover, there was at least one “secret” raid. Sources told National Review that investigators raided one office when no one was present, never disclosed the raid in any of the briefings before state and federal courts, never provided the raid targets with a copy of the warrant, and failed to provide an inventory of items seized.

The result is a privacy invasion of staggering proportions. In the interests of investigating First Amendment–protected activity, the John Doe inquisitors had seized vast amounts of personal information — including information protected by attorney-client privilege — dumped it into a searchable database controlled by angry partisans, and then refused to exercise systematic, meaningful control over the data. The lack of control was recognized even by the investigators themselves. In a confidential, heavily redacted memorandum obtained by National Review, GAB general counsel Kevin Kennedy noted that he “lack[ed] a clear and complete record of the source of each set of documents” obtained in the investigation.

Punch back twice as hard, and hopefully there will be some perp walks.