New documents indicate that just weeks after the first subpoenas were issued in Wisconsin’s “John Doe” criminal campaign finance probe in October 2013, senate Republicans had begun working to change state law to legalize the activities under investigation.
Legislative Republicans surprised many in the state in March of 2014 when they tried to rush Senate Bill 654 through the legislature to explicitly carve-out an exception to the state’s campaign finance statutes for so-called “issue ads,” those thinly-veiled election messages that stop short of telling viewers to vote for or against a candidate.
The John Doe investigation was never mentioned during testimony on SB 654 , even among the bill’s opponents.