Donald Trump implicated in Scott Walker corruption scandal in Wisconsin

A recent leak of documents from the John Doe II investigation into allegations that Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) illegally coordinated with outside political groups (most notably the Wisconsin chapter of the right-wing group Club for Growth), has, yet again, shown that the Walker Administration in Wisconsin is grotesquely corrupt. You can view the documents here, and the British newspaper The Guardian has a special feature on the document release here.

As evidenced by the leaked documents, the corruption trail is so deep in Wisconsin, it leads right up to the individual that the Republican Party nominated for President of the United States in this year’s presidential election, Donald Trump.

According to a recently leaked email, Walker was scheduled to meet with Donald Trump at 725 Fifth Avenue in New York City on the afternoon of April 3, 2012. 725 Fifth Avenue is the street address of Trump Tower, the headquarters of Donald Trump’s business empire. At the time, Walker was facing a recall attempt against him, with the recall election scheduled for June of that year (Walker went on to survive the recall attempt against him).

On the exact same day that Walker was scheduled to meet with Trump, Trump wrote a check, a photocopy of which was recently leaked, for $15,000. The check was not written either to Scott Walker personally or to Friends of Scott Walker, Walker’s official gubernatorial campaign committee, but instead to “Wisconsin Club for Growth Inc.”. Wisconsin Club for Growth is an outside political group that has spent millions of dollars supporting Republican political efforts in Wisconsin.

I don’t think for one second that Wisconsin Club for Growth receiving a check from Trump on the same day Walker met with Trump is merely a coincidence. In fact, the document leak, at a minimum, suggests that Trump has been an active player in Republican corruption in Wisconsin.

Advertisement

Wisconsin Democratic chairperson candidate Jason Rae completely misrepresents what I said about his employer’s ties to the Koch Brothers

Well, as it turns out, Jason Rae, one of five candidates for Chairperson of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, is now attacking me for exposing the ties between Thad Nation, the founder of consulting firm that he works for, Nation Consulting, and far-right political organizations, some of which are funded either directly or indirectly by the billionaire Koch Brothers.

Basically, Rae tried to claim on his personal Facebook page that I claimed that he’s a mole for the Koch Brothers, which isn’t what I actually claimed. What I actually claimed is this: First, Rae works for Nation Consulting, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based political consulting firm. Second, Nation Consulting is led by Thad Nation. Third, Thad Nation was the executive director of a group called Coalition for the New Economy (CftNE), according to a 2012 IRS 990 filing. Fourth, CftNE gave money to multiple right-wing organizations, some of which have been received funding either directly or indirectly by the Koch Brothers. Fifth, the fact that Rae works for Nation Consulting would represent at least an apparent conflict of interest if he were to be elected DPW Chair and remain employed by Nation Consulting. This is not a smear attack at all; it’s the cold hard truth about how Jason Rae’s employer, Thad Nation, has indirectly funded organizations that have run smear campaigns against Democrats and supported Republican candidates and causes.

Rae also stated that he doesn’t tolerate Democrats attacking other Democrats. I disagree with that idea, so as long as the attacks are valid, accurate, and constructive. For example, if I couldn’t attack other Democrats, I’d have little to talk about in regards to the politics of my home state of Illinois, given how morbidly corrupt the Illinois Democratic Party is, and how people like Rahm Emanuel and Mike Madigan are corporate hacks who are barely better than the Republicans and want to screw over hard-working Illinoisans at nearly every opportunity. Also, it’s quite hypocritical for someone like Rae to complain about Democrats attacking other Democrats, since Rae is a Democratic National Committee (DNC) member, and the Chairwoman of the DNC is Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has openly attacked other Democrats over issues that are important to many progressives.

If there’s anyone waging a smear attack against anyone, it’s Jason Rae. In fact, he completely misrepresented what I said about his employer, Thad Nation of Nation Consulting, having indirectly given money to right-wing organizations that staunchly oppose Democratic candidates and progressive ideals. The fact that Rae can’t respond to my blog posts about his employer indirectly giving money to right-wing organizations without accusing me of smearing him and misrepresenting my blog posts proves to me that he does not have the temperament to be in a Democratic Party leadership position of any kind, let alone the state Democratic Party chair in a state that will likely decide control of both the White House and the U.S. Senate in 2016.

Nation Consulting’s ties to Republican firms run even further

AUTHOR’S NOTE #1: This is an update to a previous blog post about Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based Nation Consulting’s ties to Republican front groups.

AUTHOR’S NOTE #2: I have made edits to the blog post in order to ensure that the blog post is 100% accurate.

Since my last blog post about Nation Consulting’s ties to Republican organizations, I’ve had an individual point out to me via a Facebook group that Coalition for the New Economy (CftNE), a group that opposes government-owned broadband internet services in areas where the private sector operates broadband services, had paid DCI Group, a mostly right-wing public relations, lobbying, and consulting firm, a total of $666,957 for work that DCI Group did for CftNE as an independent contractor, per a 2012 IRS 990 filing by CftNE (you can find that filing here; the information I mentioned in this paragraph comes from page 9 of the PDF file). CftNE was led by Thad Nation at the time of the filing; Nation is also the founder of Nation Consulting, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based consulting firm.

While DCI Group supported the effort to allow openly-LGBT people to serve in our nation’s Armed Forces, something which should have been done sooner, a lot of the other things they’ve been involved with is, in my opinion, clearly against the best interests of the American people.

DCI Group has been behind anti-climate change campaigns, including an infamous YouTube video in 2006 that spoofed the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth, in which Gore, who was Vice President of the United States during the presidency of Bill Clinton, talked about how serious of a threat climate change is to this planet. While DCI Group has never actually acknowledged its role in the Gore parody, multiple media outlets reported that a Yahoo! email from the same person who uploaded the YouTube video originated from a computer registered to DCI Group. DCI Group’s officials include, among many others, Doug Goodyear, the CEO of the firm and a former political director of the Colorado Republican Party, and Craig Stevens, who worked on two Republican presidential campaigns and also worked for Tommy Thompson when he was U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services under Republican President George W. Bush. Perhaps the worst thing that DCI Group has associated itself with is the former military junta in the Southeast Asian country of Myanmar, also known as Burma. DCI Group conducted public relations work on behalf of the Burmese junta from 2002 to 2003. The Burmese junta was known for flagrant human rights violations, including the politically-motivated house imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi. DCI Group’s work with the Burmese junta became a major controversy in the 2008 presidential election here in the U.S., as Goodyear worked with the McCain campaign prior to the media publishing reports about DCI Group’s work with the Burmese junta.

It’s 100% clear to me that Thad Nation, who is the founder of Nation Consulting and either is or was the head of CftNE, plays both sides of the street politically. While their founder, Thad Nation, has at least indirectly funded right-wing organizations, Nation Consulting, which Nation himself founded, also employs Jason Rae, who also happens to be a Democratic National Committee (DNC) member and a candidate for Chairperson of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin (DPW). That is an inconvenient truth for Rae, as it’s at least an apparent conflict of interest, if not an outright one, for Rae to be DPW chair and working for a firm led by someone who either is or was also the head of a different organization that gave money to Republican and Republican-leaning organizations simultaneously.