The Milwaukee County Circuit Court rejected former aide to Gov. Scott Walker Kelly Rindfleisch’s appeal of her 2012 conviction on four counts of misconduct while in public office and political solicitation involving public officials and employees.
Rindfleisch, who served as Walker’s deputy chief of staff while he was Milwaukee County executive, argued the search warrant issued to Yahoo and Google to search her email accounts violated her privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment.
In her appeal, Rindfleisch said law enforcement officers had unlawful permission to sort through personal, private communications to find information related to the case. The Internet service providers complied with law enforcement’s warrants and made the emails available.
However, the court disagreed. The judges said probable cause was established when the prosecutors obtained emails from January 2009 to October 2010. The court said Rindfleisch and Tim Russell, Walker’s deputy chief, engaged in partisan campaigning while working for Walker, emailing each other and other campaign aides through unofficial Yahoo and Google email accounts.
The three circuit court judges concluded Rindfleisch failed to present any evidence to suggest her Fourth Amendment rights were violated and rejected her appeal 2 to 1.
Following the rejection, Rindfleisch pled guilty to one count of misconduct in public office. The State dismissed the remaining three counts. The circuit court withheld sentence and placed Rindfleisch on probation for a period of three years, imposed a six-month period of confinement and ordered her to pay costs and surcharges.
