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[Madison, WI]— Senator Tammy Baldwin is continuing her defense of the status quo. After a Fox 6 story exposed Senator Baldwin for ignoring yet another whistleblower claim, a new report from the Washington Free Beacon shows she may have been shielding a long-time political donor.
Read the full story from the Washington Free Beacon online here, or excerpts below.
Whistleblower: Tammy Baldwin Did Not Respond to Illegal Political Activity by Postal Workers
The Washington Free Beacon
Joe Schoffstall
August 16, 2017
The office of Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wisc.) was the only office that failed to respond to complaints of postal workers illegally conducting political activity in Wisconsin during the 2016 campaign season for Democratic candidates, actions that left some postal offices in the state short on personnel, according to a whistleblower.
The union boss at the center of the incident in question is a longtime donor to Baldwin, records show.
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Kopp met Scott Van Derven, the president of the Wisconsin State Association of Letter Carriers, in the fall of 2016 when he attended one of Kopp’s meetings. Van Derven gave a brief speech about bills in Congress for which unions hoped to gain support, a practice that is regularly conducted to keep workers up-to-date on where issues stand in regards to legislation. During the meeting, Van Derven mentioned that volunteers were needed to help campaign efforts for the 2016 elections.
A few weeks after Van Derven’s visit, a carrier in Kopp’s office said he intended to volunteer with campaigning and would be gone for up to five weeks, which left the office scrambling to fill his position. Kopp spoke to his supervisor who said two people were also going to campaign from the nearby Wisconsin Rapids office, which was already shorthanded by two to three workers on most days.
Kopp’s supervisor planned to deny his worker’s request for time off to campaign. However, management in the company overruled the supervisor’s decision and told him he had to let the worker campaign.
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Van Derven, a longtime Democratic donor in the state, has made 11 donations to Baldwin’s campaign committees directly and through Act Blue, which describes itself as “the online clearinghouse for Democratic action.”
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The Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, which Kopp testified before, also has oversight of the Tomah VA, a scandal-plagued veterans affairs center in Wisconsin that was overprescribing narcotics to veterans. The abuses at the facility led to the death of a Marine. Baldwin quietly stepped away from the committee earlier this year, the Free Beacon previously reported.
Baldwin was the only member of Congress from Wisconsin to receive a report of the abuses at Tomah but did not take action until it became public more than four months later and the veteran had died.
The Democratic senator tapped Marc Elias, a partner at the D.C.-based Perkins Coie law firm who is considered the “go-to fixer” for Democrats, for help on crisis control following the scandal. Elias, who was Hillary Clinton’s top campaign lawyer, was paid $90,000 for his services.
Read the full story here.
