Wednesday's release of thousands of pages of emails from Scott Walker's tenure as Milwaukee County Executive show a former top aide wrote that "no one cares about crazy people."
Back in 2006, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on the death of Cindy Anczak. The 33-year-old woman died of starvation complications while being treated at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex for bipolar disorder.
According to the Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch, Anczak's parents filed a legal complaint in October 2010, which was brought by Walker staffers to the attention of then-Deputy Chief of Staff Kelly Rindfleisch.
"Totally coincidental to the election," replied Walker campaign advisor RJ Johnson, about the timing of the filing.
"Corp council [the County's attorney] wants to offer 50-100k," emailed Rindfleisch.
"Ok - any time after Nov. 2nd would be the time to offer a settlement," replied Keith Gilkes, who headed Walker's campaign.
"Barrett is going to make this the center of his campaign," Rindfleisch wrote in another email.
"yep and he is still going to lose because that is his base," replied Joan Hansen, a County official.
"Yep," Rindfleisch wrote. "No one cares about crazy people."
The AP noted on Wednesday that Rindfleisch was convicted in 2012 of felony misconduct in office for doing campaign work for a GOP lieutenant governor candidate on government time. She was sentenced to six months in jail and three years of probation, and is appealing her conviction on the grounds that Fourth Amendment rights were violated.
"Most of those would be four or more years old and they've gone through a legal process ... a multi-year extensive legal process by which each and every one of those communications was reviewed by authorities," Walker told reporters in Madison on Wednesday. "I'm confident that they reviewed them and they chose to act on the ones they've already made public."
Before You Go
