Free Michael McGee

FREE McGEE!

That's the rallying cry.

Go to the courthouse, get out your "Free Ald. McGee 4 Me" t-shirt and raise your fist in the air as the disgraced, handcuffed alderman is led to his seat in the courtroom.

More charges against McGee were revealed yesterday.

From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The extent of state-level criminal allegations against Ald. Michael McGee became clear Friday, with Circuit Judge Dennis P. Moroney lifting the veil on 12 counts, including seven felonies, filed against the embattled politician.

District Attorney John T. Chisholm said in court McGee's alleged criminal acts amount to "a serious, serious attack on the foundation of our representative system," and in a court filing contends that McGee aimed to "subvert the election process" to hang on to his aldermanic seat in the face of a recall election.

The 12 charges against McGee include newly revealed allegations that he lied to officials during an inquiry about the recall election, misused and did not report campaign donations, bribed voters with $5 payments in the recall election, then repeatedly violated a confidentiality order to tell others about what happened during a John Doe court proceeding. He now faces 12 counts, including those filed shortly after his arrest on Memorial Day on allegations he arranged with two men to have a suspected burglar beaten.

...The new counts in the criminal complaint, which was distributed by Chisholm in the wake of Moroney's ruling, focus on four situations, largely revolving around the unsuccessful attempt to recall him from office this spring:

• The recall petition against McGee. The complaint accuses McGee of lying to election officials in December about why he signed it. McGee told the officials he was duped into signing it under the ruse it was a petition to keep Malcolm X Academy open. Two people at the scene said, however, McGee told them he was signing the petition deliberately. Additionally, McGee is charged with handing out political material at a polling place during the Feb. 20 primary, weeks before his recall would go to voters. Lying to election officials is a felony; electioneering is a misdemeanor.

• Mishandling campaign donations, a situation which bears similarities to those faced in the past in federal court by then-Aldermen Paul Henningsen and Jeff Pawlinski. Henningsen was found guilty at trial of misusing campaign funds, while Pawlinski pleaded guilty. Both served time in federal prison. McGee is charged with a misdemeanor count of theft by bailee for cashing checks, intended as political donations, written to him in March, that were never put into his campaign coffers. He also is charged with a felony for omitting one of the checks from a campaign finance report, while another was written after the reporting deadline.

• A $5-per-vote scheme during his recall election. McGee is charged with three felonies relating to this plan: one as a party to the crime of election bribery for getting money to another man who paid two undercover police officers to vote and drove them to City Hall, and two direct counts of election bribery based on wiretapped conversations with two co-conspirators identified only as "Precious" and "Reesey" in the complaint.

• Contempt of a court order of secrecy during a John Doe investigation, which ran from December to April. Investigators listening on wiretaps heard McGee talk freely to friends on the telephone about the content of the investigation, including mocking the terms of secrecy and calling the judge, Circuit Judge Jean W. DiMotto, a "bitch." The three counts of criminal contempt of court are not classified as misdemeanors or felonies.

Let's not look at McGee's alleged crimes.

Let's look at his supporters.

They enabled McGee. They gave his style of "leadership" their blessing.

They did it when they voted to keep him in office, allowing him to survive a recall election with a whopping 64% of the vote.

They do it when they show up in court and don "Free Ald. McGee 4 Me" shirts.

McGee couldn't have done with he did and be the sort of alderman he is without the support of his constituents.

That's the most disturbing part of all of this.

It's not McGee sporting jailhouse orange and handcuffs.

It's the people wearing "Free Ald. McGee 4 Me" shirts.