Talk:John T. Chisholm

Notability issues

This person is a local elected prosecutor. Discounting "local press" which anyone holding a similar office anywhere would get, I don't see the significant coverage of this person from independent, reliable sources needed to qualify for a stand-alone article.

If evidence of notability is not provided soon, I recommend turning this page into a redirect to Milwaukee County, Wisconsin#Government. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 03:14, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

• Hello Davidwr! I'm the main author of this article, and I would have replied to you much sooner had I checked this page this winter. Chisholm has received a pretty heavy amount of coverage in both local and national media throughout the last few years, and I'll add some more substantive sources than those presently on the page. As both a large-city DA and the subject of considerable media coverage, I'd hazard that this article should be kept independent. Thanks for your input; feel free to contact me with any suggestions. —Theodore! (talk) (contribs) 23:08, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, this article should remain here. -- Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 17:37, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

New NEWS today, for future editing

One commentator says about this, "Remember the name, John Chisholm!"

Headline-1: Wisconsin’s Shame: ‘I Thought It Was a Home Invasion’

• http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417155/wisconsins-shame-i-thought-it-was-home-invasion-david-french

QUOTE: "As Mr. O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth explained in court filings, the investigation then dramatically expanded: Over the next few months, [Chisholm’s] investigation of all-things-Walker expanded to include everything from alleged campaign-finance violations to sexual misconduct to alleged public contracting bid-rigging to alleged misuse of county time and property. Between May 5, 2010, and May 3, 2012, the Milwaukee Defendants filed at least eighteen petitions to formally “[e]nlarge” the scope of the John Doe investigation, and each was granted. . . . That amounts to a new formal inquiry every five and a half weeks, on average, for two years. This expansion coincided with one of the more remarkable state-level political controversies in modern American history – the protest (and passage) of Act 10, followed by the attempted recall of a number of Wisconsin legislators and, ultimately, Governor Walker." -- Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 17:46, 21 April 2015 (UTC) -- PS: The article looks good, and this is FYI for possible future editing.

Undue weight

Understandably, the John Doe investigations are major political issues. But this is a biographical article. Chisholm is notable primarily for his service as district attorney; see the recent Jeffrey Toobin article in the Washington Post focusing on his prosecutorial work. While the John Doe investigations are a major portion of his post-2010 legacy, and merit their own section, such a section should be no more than a paragraph or so in length. This is a short article intended as a neutral, verifiably-sourced summary of this individual's career. A massive section reliant on dubious sources (the Daily Mail is not exactly the Wall Street Journal when it comes to veracity, and many other sources are affiliated with Chisholm's legal adversaries) is in gross contravention of WP:NPOV and, specifically WP:UNDUE. I will work to shorten this section and promise to keep it objective, explaining what happened, according to reliable sources, and how people (O'Keefe, etc.) have reacted, also according to reliable sources. 174.102.162.186 (talk) 00:50, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

I appreciate your conciliatory tone but for you to state that the Daily Mail is not exactly the Wall Street Journal when it comes to veracity, is not doing justice to what you are trying to say. The WSJ is known for its political outlook and has the same owner as The Daily Mail I believe. In any event, the following WSJ story about the John Doe process may interest you, and that is something Chisholm is inherently linked into. Another story is here. Yours, Quis separabit? 01:22, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

How Wisconsin Prosecutors Became Campaign Partisans
Their raids on conservatives have chilled political speech and amount to a huge donation to Democrats.
By RICHARD M. ESENBERG
Sept. 19, 2014 6:53 p.m. ET
Last year Wisconsin prosecutors—at the behest of Milwaukee's Democratic District Attorney John Chisholm—launched a secret criminal investigation involving almost every conservative advocacy group in the state. Armed law-enforcement personnel executed pre-dawn searches of the homes of consultants for the Wisconsin Club for Growth. The organization had engaged in "issue advocacy"—running ads that do not call for the election or defeat of a candidate

—both before and during the extended cycle of recall elections for state officials following Gov. Scott Walker's collective-bargaining reforms in 2011. At the same time, subpoenas were directed to approximately 30 other conservative advocacy organizations and their bankers and accountants. The investigation has been stopped by a preliminary injunction in O'Keefe v. Chisholm, and it is the subject of legal wrangling in state and federal courts, but if Mr. Chisholm's efforts were politically motivated, then he can already claim victory. As midterm elections near, Wisconsin conservative groups have been sufficiently intimidated amid the uncertain legal climate, or their money has been so depleted by courtroom fights, that they are not the force in the state that they were in 2012. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on Sept. 14, Gov. Walker's campaign was outspent in television advertising by his Democratic challenger, Mary Burke, thanks in part to donations from the Greater Wisconsin Committee, "an anti-Walker group heavily funded by organized labor." Ms. Burke's spending advantage is a remarkable contrast with the 2012 recall fight, when Gov. Walker enjoyed strong conservative backing and was better funded than his opposition. A recent editorial in these pages noted that the Wisconsin Club for Growth's political fundraising has been suspended and the group "hasn't run a single ad in this election cycle." Campaign-finance lawyers often say that the process is the punishment, and that has certainly been the case in Wisconsin. I have witnessed it first-hand as my organization, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, consults with many conservative advocacy groups across Wisconsin.After the raids became public knowledge, the prosecutors claimed that they were investigating allegations that the Wisconsin Club for Growth and other groups had illegally "coordinated" their speech on political issues with Gov. Walker's campaign in violation of the state's baroque and often inscrutable campaign finance laws. The investigators seized sensitive and highly confidential records of a good part of the state's conservative infrastructure. The investigation was conducted under the state's peculiar John Doe procedure—an inquiry that is held in secret and in which those being investigated are subject to a gag order. The targets of the raids were told that they could not tell the public what was being done to them.

This inquiry is likely to lead to little or nothing—just as Mr. Chisholm's earlier three-year probe into Mr. Walker's tenure as Milwaukee County executive led to only a few minor prosecutions. Both state and federal judges have rejected the prosecutors' theory regarding the illegality of the Wisconsin Club for Growth's activities, but the district attorney continues to press his case. O'Keefe v. Chisholm is the group's effort, now in the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, to stop the probe. Members of Wisconsin conservative advocacy groups tell me that they are reluctant to speak out on the issues, and that donors are wary of donating, when the price may be having their house ransacked and their private affairs dragged into court cases. The fact that these people asked for anonymity when speaking with me is indicative of how successful Mr. Chisholm has been in discouraging conservative speech in Wisconsin. A conservative acquaintance who is a longtime political donor told me that he backed off giving money to the organizers of a political rally because candidates for office were going to speak at the event—he feared that his donation would have left him open to legal trouble for having "coordinated" messaging with the candidates. I note that Mary Burke recently spoke at "Fighting BobFest," a liberal-issues rally sponsored by two Madison-area media companies that apparently felt unworried about getting on the wrong side of prosecutors. Courts have long recognized that political speech is fragile and can be chilled by laws that are too broad and regulators who are overly zealous. Potential speakers in Wisconsin are now well aware of the prosecutors' strong-arm tactics. In the event that the state Supreme Court finally rules on Mr. Chisholm's appeal, the possibility that his investigation would be restarted leaves them fearful of being next on his list. This is a sorry state of affairs: Both the right to speak on issues and to speak—even to "coordinate"—with elected officials about those issues is constitutionally protected. Illegal coordination must be narrowly and clearly defined, but Wisconsin law doesn't do that, and the prosecutors have taken full advantage of the law's vagaries. In the meantime, because details of the prosecutors' investigation remain secret, both the media and liberal partisans have been free to speculate about what is happening—aided by documents that have leaked or been selectively released for legal reasons. None of them reflect illegal activity by the governor or the targeted groups, but the local press is deeply invested in the idea that there must be a story somewhere. It pounces on each detail. Because campaign-finance law is extraordinarily complex, some voters will interpret a headline as proof that someone must have done something wrong. And that's the whole idea. In Wisconsin, criminal law — wielded selectively and aggressively — has become a political weapon.
Mr. Esenberg is the president and general counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. The group filed an amicus brief in O'Keefe v. Chisholm.

• I understand your point, as well, and the article is interesting. Certainly, Mr. Esenberg is not a neutral source on this particular subject, no matter where he has published his opinions. 174.102.162.186 (talk) 22:37, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Judge Steven G. Bauer

Online search for the judge's political affiliation has not turned up anything either, Democrat or Republican (see [1],[2],[3], [4]). Perhaps in Wisconsin, judges are not listed by party, I don't know, so I reverted text accordingly. Quis separabit? 23:28, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm the IP user you've been in contact with--I replied on my user page, found info that calls Bauer a Republican. 166.181.80.41 (talk) 18:17, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

OK. I called the number in Wisconsin and the person told me that judges [there] do not have party affiliation. I understand that that might constitute OR, but it was to try to satisfy my own personal curiosity. Quis separabit? 22:24, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

"found info that calls Bauer a Republican" -- where is it? Quis separabit? 22:24, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

[5] 174.102.162.186 (talk) 03:11, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

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Sourcing issues

Both links using Urban Milwaukee are opinion pieces, and are not really appropriate for state of fact information. Jeffrey Toobin is a not an expert, he is a commentator (and a poor, not to mentioned disgraced, one at that), so there is not a good reason to use his [again] opinions unless he is somehow directly related to the events of Chrisholm's cases.HoundofBaskersville (talk) 22:08, 6 December 2021 (UTC)