It's time for McGee truth to come out

Yes, he's back in the news.
We're talking, of course, about Mike McGee.
It's not Alderman Mike McGee anymore. With his loss in April, McGee is a regular citizen again, although admittedly McGee won't ever be considered a "'regular citizen" in Milwaukee whether he holds office or not.
McGee's new role is as Milwaukee's most infamous ex-politician, a man denied bail for almost a year. Next Monday - Memorial Day - is the one-year anniversary of when authorities swooped in to gather him up in anticipation of a slew of charges designed to put him away for a long time.
Since then, he's won a primary and lost an election behind bars and still maintains supporters who believe he's received a raw deal. Now, he will face the charges in front of a jury for the first time.
Clearly, the pressure is on McGee, but it's also on Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm and U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic. After months of hearing how dangerous McGee was to the general public, everybody in town will finally get to see exactly what kind of cards the prosecutors have been holding.
In poker, I believe, the term is "all in."
It will likely soon become apparent, after testimony from a gaggle of witnesses, whether McGee deserves to be considered public enemy No. 1 or whether someone seriously overreached in building the kind of political corruption case worthy of a notorious criminal kingpin.
Frankly, after McGee has spent a year in jail, if the evidence against him doesn't blow Milwaukee's socks off, something's wrong.
I sat in on the beginning of the state case against McGee (the federal trial comes next), as dueling legal teams laid groundwork in front of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Dennis Moroney. Seated at the defendant's table dressed in a suit, McGee looked relatively composed for a guy who's been behind bars so long. But deputies continue to place him in handcuffs upon leaving the courtroom.
On Monday morning, Chisholm and McGee's lawyers - Larraine McNamara-McGraw and Larry Jarrett - went back and forth about various issues involving Arabic translators, suitable expert witnesses and even whether the defense would be allowed to call Biskupic to testify during the trial.
Moroney is the judge who informed the attorneys not to allow race to become an issue in the trial. Given the fact the defendant is one of Milwaukee's most controversial black politicians, that seems like wishful thinking to me.
There was a request by McGee's lawyers to hire an Arabic translator to help decipher government wiretap evidence. They also might need a hip-hop translator - some government tape recordings apparently capture McGee and others using rap music lingo like "peeling back" an alleged target's "wig," which is part of the evidence in the battery charges.
Courtroom observers must go through a metal detector and receive instructions from a deputy about not disrupting the trial under threat of arrest. Many McGee supporters believe the charges were designed to remove him from office. If that's true, the government already won. But something much bigger is at stake. It's finally time to see whether McGee was truly a nefarious public official or whether the case against him is more speculation than actual proof of wrongdoing.
In any event, it looks like the waiting is over.