Democrat Clayton Walker, whose 2014 petition for US Senate was ‘signed’ by such luminaries as “Jeff Bridges,” “Ryan Reynolds,” and “Bambi Lake,” is still awaiting trial as the prosecution of his case proceeds forward. If you recall, Clayton was arrested for allegedly falsifying signatures on his petitions. And was arrested again for calling several state offices threatening and harassing employees.
The Attorney General’s office is reporting to SDWC that a motions hearing is in the process of being scheduled in the case, and will likely be held on April 29th.
While the events in this case took place early last year, Walker himself has likely been the cause of many of the delays in the matter. As his third attorney was attempting to jettison the case, a February Capitol Journal Article noted that Walker was ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation and a competency hearing was possibly going to be scheduled:
“I think rather than spelling everything out … I’ll just say I can’t work with him,” Rensch said. “I can tell you based upon what happened that we have become adversarial.”
In a written response to Rensch’s motion, Walker said the attorney/client relationship couldn’t have been broken because they had only met once. Walker also accused Rensch’s staff of lying to the lawyer and accused Rensch of wanting to withdraw from the case because it had become “politicized.”
“My attorney only wants to wiggle out of my case because he found out how highly politicized this case is with election fraud by the state and a cover up by a state university,” Walker said in a written statement asking for a hearing on Rensch’s motion to withdraw.
and..
Brown denied the motion saying Walker’s trouble working with his lawyers was causing the delays.
Walker’s trial date was not been set, Brown said, because he want to wait for the results of Walker’s evaluation and hold a competency hearing.
The Walker case is the second case of alleged petition signature inconsistencies that the Attorney General’s office is prosecuting from the 2014 US Senate Race, with the first being the Annette Bosworth matter, which is scheduled to go to trial in May.