Federal judge orders probe of Wisconsin conservatives shut down again

In the latest round of this week’s dizzying federal court filings, U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Randa on Thursday morning quickly fired back at the prosecutors of a politically charged John Doe investigation, declaring their appeal frivolous and ordering a preliminary injunction halting the secret investigation reinstated.

Randa’s ruling came swiftly, less than a day after the  7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals stayed the judge’s preliminary injunction, issued Tuesday, that stopped the nearly three-year investigation and ordered all documents obtained in the probe destroyed.

The appeals court said Randa jumped the gun in issuing his decision before he determined the status of the prosecutors’ appeal. In its ruling on the prosecutors’ emergency appeal, the 7th Circuit said Randa erred in failing to certify that an appeal filed last month by the prosecutors with the 7th Circuit was frivolous.

Randa, federal judge for the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, quickly answered that lapse.

“To be clear, the Court is absolutely convinced that the defendants’ attempt to appeal this issue is a frivolous effort to deprive the Court of its jurisdiction to enter an injunction,” Randa wrote in the ruling Thursday. “The Court’s forbearance in allowing the defendants to raise these issues cannot and should not deprive the Court of jurisdiction to enter an injunction in this case.”

In February, conservative activist O’Keefe and his Wisconsin Club for Growth filed a civil rights lawsuit against Milwaukee County District John Chisholm, two of his assistant DAs, John Doe Special Prosecutor Francis Schmitz, and shadowy Government Accountability Board-contracted investigator Dean Nickel.

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