Update 1 (3 p.m.): This blog post, and Mark Belling’s interview of WI Attorney General Brad Schimel, have gone viral thanks to tweets by James O’Keefe:
Update 2 (3:15 p.m.): Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has published a followup article referencing the Belling-Schimel interview (and this blog post): “Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel contradicts office, says voter fraud probe is open.” Anyone following this story should read the whole thing. [further, 4 p.m., update — link to article has been tweeted by O’Keefe and Project Veritas.]
Update 3 (4 p.m.): Patrick Marley now has another amazing scoop: just hours before Wisconsin AG Brad Schimel told Mark Belling that the investigation into vote fraud was OPEN, Schimel told the Wisconsin Radio Network that the investigation was CLOSED!:
In breaking this story on Twitter, Marley linked to audio of the interview (article and audio are here) and posted this transcript of Schimel’s remarks.
In a recent tweet, O’Keefe notes the conflicting stories over whether or not the investigation is over, and asks: “Which is true?” Good question.
Update 4 (4:45 p.m.): Patrick Marley has now updated his followup article (originally posted at 2:55 p.m. today). He now notes in the first paragraph that Schimel’s comments on Belling’s show contradicted “comments he made hours earlier that the probe had been closed.” Paragraphs 10-13 compare Schimel’s statement that Project Veritas was spreading “fake news” (an accusation to which O’Keefe did not react kindly) by complaining that the investigation was closed, with Schimel’s statement hours earlier that the investigation was closed:
“I appreciate the work that groups like Project Veritas do to expose corruption and criminal conspiracies, but the war of words that has sparked up in the last 24 hours is incited by fake news, Mark,” Schimel said.
But hours earlier, Schimel described the investigation as closed in his interview with the Wisconsin Radio Network.
“We didn’t seek to shame anyone but when we do an investigation, that is after we close it, it is a public record and therefore when members of the media wanted to see the results of the investigation they were able to get their hands on that,” he said.
“We did take it seriously and looked at this to see whether there was something we could pursue and just concluded that there’s not anything that provided itself as a viable investigatory lead.”
Update 5 (7:30 p.m.):
Ernst-Ulrich Franzen
Surveying today’s wreckage at the Wisconsin Department of Justice, in an op-ed posted this evening, Ernst-Ulrich Franzen, the Sentinel Journal‘s associate editorial page editor, asks: “What game is Schimel playing?”
Update 6 (Apr. 29, 9 p.m.): Here’s a video splicing together the contradictory statements made by Attorney General Brad Schimel in his two separate radio interviews of April 27 (if you think others would find it informative, please RT this):
* * * * * *
[ORIGINAL POST]
James O’Keefe III
Conservative journalist James O’Keefe was not pleased when he read this April 25 article by Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, reporting that the Wisconsin Department of Justice had concluded that O’Keefe’s Project Veritas sting operation last year into rigging of Wisconsin elections by leftists, documented by undercover videos, showed no violation of Wisconsin laws, and that the investigation had come to an end.
(For a quick refresher on the undercover videos, watch this Badger Pundit video, and read Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit (here and here) and Breitbart (here, here, and here). Examples of liberal spin are here and here.)
O’Keefe promptly released two videos (here and here) suggesting that conservatives should consider targeting Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel for failing to adequately investigate evidence of vote fraud by leftists. This prompted another Journal article, highlighting this quote from O’Keefe (speaking into the camera, to Schimel): “If the state of Wisconsin is not going to do their job, then, then, we should — you should be investigated. We should investigate you and you should lose your job.”
O’Keefe then urged conservatives to contact the Wisconsin Department of Justice to demand an investigation of the voter fraud. Turning up the pressure, later that day he tweeted: “We’ve been told that a lot of reporters are still waiting for a comment from @WisDOJ regarding their report.”
Into the breach stepped Wisconsin conservative talk-radio pioneer Mark Belling (who regularly guest hosts for Rush Limbaugh) of Milwaukee’s Talk/Radio 1030 WISN. In his April 27 late afternoon show, Mark gave an overview of the story and then conducted an extensive interview of Attorney General Schimel, in which Schimel praised the work of Project Veritas and clarified that the investigation triggered by the undercover videos is not over.
Here is a video containing the full audio of Mark’s discussion, illustrated with various images, and supplemented by excerpts from the undercover videos at issue:
Leave a Reply