Indiana prosecutor resigns after suggesting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker stage fake attack against himself 5:42 PM, Mar. 24, 2011 |
An Indiana deputy prosecutor and Republican activist resigned Thursday after the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism published an email in which he suggested faking an attack on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
Carlos F. Lam submitted his resignation shortly after the Center published a story quoting his Feb. 19 email, which praised Walker but went on to say that the situation in Wisconsin presented “a good opportunity for what’s called a ‘false flag’ operation.”
“If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions’ cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions,” the email said.
After praising Walker, the email — sent Feb. 19 during union demonstrations against Walker’s budget repair bill — then took a darker turn.
“Currently, the media is painting the union protest as a democratic uprising and failing to mention the role of the DNC and umbrella union organizations in the protest.
"Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions. God bless, Carlos F. Lam.”
Email headers with detailed IP addresses suggest that the message was sent from Indianapolis. But Lam, the deputy Johnson County prosecutor and an Indianapolis resident, told the Center he never wrote it.
Reached Tuesday by phone at the number listed on the email, Lam confirmed his email address matched the Hotmail address appearing on the Walker email, but said he had never written to Walker.
“I am flabbergasted and would never advocate for something like this, and would like everyone to be sure that that's just not me,” he said, after being read the email. Asked his views on Scott Walker, Lam said,
“I think he's trying to do what he has to do to get his budget balanced. But jeez, that's taking it a little bit to the extreme,” he said of the email’s suggestion to fake violence. “Jeez!”
Lam said he was minivan-shopping with his family when the email was sent.
Lam’s admission that he sent the email appears in a statement released today by Johnson County Prosecutor Bradley Cooper.
“Over the weekend, on his own time and on his own personal computer, one of my deputy prosecutors sent an email to Gov. Walker of Wisconsin that contained a foolish suggestion,” Cooper wrote. “He originally denied sending the email, claiming that his Hotmail account had been hacked into.
“Early this morning, the deputy contacted me from his home, admitted to me that he did send the email to Gov. Walker and tendered his resignation, which I have accepted.”
