John Doe prosecutor John Chisholm objects to what Stuart Taylor Jr. said about his anti-Walker vendetta.

Taylor quoted an unnamed source, a former prosecutor, who claims to have heard Chisholm speak of having a "personal duty to stop" Governor Scott Walker:

[The] longtime Chisholm subordinate [says that] Chisholm told him and others that Chisholm’s wife, Colleen, a teacher’s union shop steward at St. Francis high school, a public school near Milwaukee... "frequently cried when discussing the topic of the union disbanding and the effect it would have on the people involved … She took it personally."

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says Chisholm "denied... that his two secret probes ... were motivated by a political vendetta arising out of his wife's profession as a public school teacher." I'm not seeing the text of Chisholm's denial — only the newspaper's paraphrase — but to say that the probes weren't "motivated by a political vendetta" (the Sentinel's words) is not to deny that he spoke of his wife's frequent crying and his concern for her in a way that made listener's feel that he had a personal and political mission.

One could talk about one's wife's feelings, express great concern for her pain, and still believe that you were capable of excluding your personal sentiments from your professional decision-making. Rightly or wrongly, you could think you were doing the compartmentalizing that ethics require. Rightly or wrongly, your co-workers might judge you to be failing to compartmentalize. What was true?

Chisholm's lawyer gave the newspaper text that it prints in its (presumably) original form:  "The suggestion that all of those measures were taken in furtherance of John Chisholm's (or his wife's) personal agenda is scurrilous, desperate and just plain cheap." That's just a passionate — some might say desperate — statement of outrage that asserts nothing factual. And note the word "all." That leaves the possibility that some of those measures were part of a personal agenda. Lawyers. You have to watch out for them, and when you have the advantage of seeing their original texts, you have a decent chance to see where they are hedging. The lawyer wants you to notice the very interesting words "scurrilous, desperate and just plain cheap." Refocus on "all," and you'll see how little the lawyer is saying.

Stuart Taylor quotes his unnamed source as saying "it was surprising how almost hyper-partisan [Chisholm] became." And:

Chisholm “had almost like an anti-Walker cabal of people in his office who were just fanatical about union activities and unionizing. And a lot of them went up and protested. They hung those blue fists on their office walls [to show solidarity with union protestors] … At the same time, if you had some opposing viewpoints that you wished to express, it was absolutely not allowed.”

Taylor got a response from Chisholm's lawyer. He called it "baseless character assault" and "inaccurate in a number of critical ways" — without, Taylor says, specifying what the inaccuracies were. He won't say it was nothing but lies. The hedging is obvious: "inaccurate in a number of critical ways." Which ways?! Were there blue fist signs hanging on the walls? Did people in Chisholm's office participate in the protests? Was there a fanatical, anti-Walker atmosphere in the office? Which part is inaccurate? Was it anti-Walker but not quite "fanatical"? Did some but not "a lot" protest? Were blue fists hung up in the office but not by so many people that it's fair to say "They"? I don't know, and given the pressure to be specific, the generic objection implies that there is something there.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel quotes "an attorney with Democratic ties who defended clients caught up in the Doe probe" who says that "he saw no evidence of political bias or union support in their dealings with Chisholm and his office" and that "he didn't observe signs with a blue fist." Would the unnamed defense lawyer even have been in the part of the office where the unnamed former prosecutor saw the blue fists? That the prosecutors behaved in a professional manner in their dealings with the defense lawyers doesn't say much about how they behaved behind the scenes, which is what Taylor's source purports to tell us about. If there really was an anti-Walker vendetta, the prosecutors would have known they had to hide it.

The Sentinel quotes another defense attorney, one who allows his name to be used, who also says he didn't see the union signs, but "he might have missed them." And "I never saw any blue fists but I saw a lot of red faces," which is funny, but I'm not sure what it means. Was he saying that the prosecutors seemed unprofessionally inflamed by a mission?

Reading these 2 articles this morning, I'm thinking that Taylor raised suspicions that Chisholm and his lawyers and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel have not adequately refuted. I want to see a specific statement from Chisholm that goes into the details, something more than expressions of outrage and denials that could be based on Chisholm's belief that he compartmentalized his prosecutorial decisionmaking and his personal political beliefs and husbandly tenderness.

Were there blue fist signs in the office and other expressions of support for unions and antagonism to Walker? What was the extent of participation in the protests? Did Chisholm speak openly about his wife's feelings in the context of the case? Taylor's article created a strong motivation to respond on that level, and neither Chisholm nor his lawyer provided that response.

UPDATE: The MJS purports to reveal the source, discussed in a new post.