Yet more delays in the John Doe trials.
A final pre-trial hearing has been postponed for Kevin D. Kavanaugh, a former associate to Gov. Scott Walker who’s accused of embezzling about $42,000 from veteran groups.
The 62-year-old has pleaded not guilty to felony theft and fraud charges. His pre-trial hearing Tuesday morning was rescheduled to Friday. His trial is scheduled to start next month.
Don't hold your breath. There's been an extensive history of postponement and delays in the trials for John Doe defendents:
Kelly Reindfleisch's (former top aide to Scott Walker) trial is scheduled to begin on October 15 as I dairied (cheesy error) diaried and linked here after her lame attempt to involve past (2002) immunity to cover future actions died a humiliating death at the hands of the judge following 2 attempts to move her trial out of Milwaukee County and into a Republican friendly county in Wisconsin.
Tim Russell, former top aide to former Milwaukee County Executive and current Governor Scott Walker (R-FitzWalkerStan) has been the King of Trial Delays using lawyer changes to delay his trial on embezzlement of veterans group funds and misconduct in office (using taxpayer funded facilities and times for political work). His fifth change in lawyers has been enough to postpone his trial until December.
Darlene Wink, former top aide to former Milwaukee County Executive and current Governor Scott Walker (R-FitzWalkerStan), who was charged alongside Kelly Reindfleisch, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for misdemeaner charges (insted of felony charges) had her sentencing (trial not necessary since she will be pleading guilty to the charges) moved to November 21 at the request of prosecutors who wanted to ensure that Wink continued cooperating with them on the John Doe Probe.
Unless there are new developments or new indictments, the next information we'll have about the expanding John Doe Probe will come during the trials of his top aides. The 28 month long expanding probe, which has been investigating activities in Scott Walkers Milwaukee County Executives office, has recently asked for and received information on activities in Walkers office as Governor and has a federal investigation being handled by the FBI, as well. Lips are sealed in the prosecutors office, but lawyers for some of the defendants have leaked some information.
One by one, we've seen these trials delayed and delayed. While they can't be delayed forever, it seems that the goal might be to delay these trials of Republican wrongdoing until after the November elections. Information coming out prior to the elections would be quite damaging to the GOP.
So, here's the timeline so far:
September 7, 2012: Final pre-trial hearing (delayed from today) for Kevin Kavanaugh.
October 15, 2012: Start of the trial for Kelly Reindfleisch.
November 21, 2012: Sentencing for Darlene Wink (plea bargain/cooperating)
December, 2012: Start of the trial for Tim Russell
If they are trying to avoid impacting the November election, I would expect that lawyers for Kevin Kavanaugh will try to delay his trial until after the election and that Kelly Reindfleisch's attorney will try to postpone her trial again.
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PS: Please be aware that I'm once again having problems with my new computer (my 7 year old tower of misery is starting to look pretty good) after about a month since the hard drive got replaced. Dell will be replacing my hard drive (again) and motherboard. The computer doesn't reliably boot up and freezes often, so if I'm not around to tip or rec or reply, it's not that I'm not interested, but unable to do so.