Posted on 08/08/2010 11:13:01 AM PDT by maggief
EXCERPT
That feeling is heightened by speculation that Fitzgerald, the longest-serving U.S. attorney in Chicago history, may have stayed in his post largely to shepherd the Blagojevich case. And no matter what the jury decides, the trial's end is almost certain to rekindle interest in the top prosecutor's possible next move, a popular parlor game in local legal and political circles.
Many have wondered in recent years whether Fitzgerald's Chicago tenure was winding down and if he would seek a higher post within the Justice Department or forge a career in private practice. Shortly after President Obama took office, there had been speculation in Chicago and Washington that Fitzgerald, 49, would be tapped to oversee the FBI when Director Robert Mueller's term ends in September 2011.
Many believe the FBI would be a better fit for Fitzgerald a career prosecutor who was once famously described by a friend as "Eliot Ness with a Harvard degree" than a high-paying job at big law firm.
(Excerpt) Read more at articles.chicagotribune.com ...
Mmm ... mmm ... mmmm.
(Might explain pulling the plug early on the wiretaps.)
Ping.
Remember the agent that was not allowed to retire, (even though he had reached retirement age) may have triggered bringing this case to trial early.
I’m sure his future is bright.
Does anyone doubt that his sole mission in the Blago trial was to protect the King and his Chicago retainers?
*IL Politics Ping*
Hmm...
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/blagojevich/2467698,CST-NWS-fbiagent06.article
The FBI agent who ran wiretaps on Blagojevich
(Pete) Cullen retired last week as most senior agent in U.S.
EXCERPT
For more than two months preceding the arrest, Cullen spent every night coordinating more than 100 agents who, in shifts, monitored at least nine different phone lines belonging to Blagojevich and those in his inner circle.
By FBI rules, Cullen shouldn’t have even been there. He reached the FBI’s mandatory retirement age of 57 in 2006.
But again and again, Chicago’s FBI chief Robert Grant had something else in mind for the longtime agent and supervisor.
In the spring of 2008, Grant got special permission to extend Cullen’s tenure and appointed him acting assistant special agent in charge of public corruption.
I wonder how long it will take the Judge to order a mistrial?
9 days?
I wonder if the Jury is afraid to reach a verdict?
http://inform.com/united-states/nononsense-blagojevich-judge-actor-novelist-607637a
The 68-year-old (Judge James B. Zagel) is a Chicago native who graduated from the University of Chicago and got his law degree from Harvard. He became a prosecutor in the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and later chief of the criminal division of the Illinois attorney generals office.
In that post, he appointed a budding young lawyer, Jayne Carr, as his top aide. She later became Jayne Carr Thompson, wife of former Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson.
Gov. Thompson picked Zagel to head the Illinois Department of Law Enforcement in his administration and eventually recommended him to President Ronald Reagan for a judgeship. He was appointed to the District Court bench in 1987.
//
(no link)
Senate OKs James Zagel as U.S. judge
Chicago Sun-Times - Wednesday, April 22, 1987
Author: Michael Briggs
WASHINGTON The Senate yesterday confirmed President Reagan’s nomination of James B. Zagel , the Illinois State Police Department director, to be a federal judge in Chicago.
Without debate, the Senate approved Zagel s appointment to the bench of the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois.
Zagel , 46, has headed the state law enforcement agency since 1980. Prior to that he was Revenue Department director in Gov. Thompson s Cabinet.
When Zagel is sworn in as a judge, Thompson is expected to nominate Jeremy D. Margolis, now inspector general, to the top State Police post.
Groomed as an understudy to Zagel , Margolis has been a troubleshooter for Thompson since the governor created the inspector general job in part as a political foil to what turned out to be a short-circuited 1986 gubernatorial challenge by Illinois Attorney General Neil F. Hartigan.
//
http://illinoiscorruption.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-is-illinois-so-corrupt.html
Friday, December 12, 2008
Why is Illinois So Corrupt?
Watch the videos on this site:
http://www.crimefilenews.com/2008/12/chicago-corruption-fighter-and-author.html
Robert Cooley is a former mafia lawyer who worked with corrupt Illinois officials and judges. He turned states witness and he explains how the Chicago Machine still run by Alderman Ed Burke who picks the judges and controls the Chicago City Finance Committee and his wife corrupt Illinois Supreme Court Justice Ann Burke still are up to their ears in corrupt politics as usual. He talks how this cabal of corruption:
1- controls the media,
2-pays off the U S Attorney (former and probably still pays off his middle men, hired during this super corrupt era, who hide stuff from present US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald so the only people prosecuted are fall guys like Blagojevic so as to take the heat off the real top dog crooks like:
A- Jim Thompson (former Gov X 16 years, Director of CIA oversight committee under 1st
President Bush and member of 911 Commission under W)
B-Madigans (Speaker of the House Michael and his daughter Attorney General Lisa, who
lauder all the bribery money kicked back from State, County and City contracts through
their political fund friends of Madigan),
C-the Burkes, and
D-the Daleys(Richard - Chicago Mayor and partner of John Burge [the torturer to get
murder confessions] while he was states attorney, John - Cook Co. Commissioner who
controlled Co. Board President John Stroger Sr and his Son Todd who replaced him, and
William former Commerce Secr. under Cliniton and now wants to be Gov of IL and
therefore needs to discredit Blagojevic and Lisa Madigan).
A summary of the system running Illinois in my view is as follows:
Illinois for too long has been under the control of the:
1- Kingdom of former Gov. Jim (Prince John) Thompson and
2-his Lords, Chicago Mayor Richard M. and Cook Co. Commissioner John Daley (sons of former Mayor Richard J.), County Board Pres. John Stroger Jr. (son of former County Board Pres. John Stroger),
3-House Speaker Michael and his daughter Atty Gen. Lisa Madigan,
4-Alderman Ed (buddy of Fast Ed[dy] now convict Vrydoliak - both of them were leaders against African American Mayor Washington in the cousel wars 20 years ago) and IL. Supreme Court Justice Ann Burke,
5-former Sheriff (of Nottingham) Sheahan, and
6-States Attorney Richard (Gisbourne) Divine, as well as
7-other Lords such as former Sen. President Emil Jones and now his son Emil Jones Jr.
(snip)
There is a reason why people in Illinois like Edgar..
No matter what else he does in life, the legacy of Patrick Fitzgerald will be that he successfully prosecuted a guy I had never heard of before (Scooter Libby) for lying about a crime that was not committed. With a track record like that , Mr. Fitgerald will be a candidate for the poster child position on what went wrong with the American government.
Reads like a dangerous place to reach the “wrong” verdict.
I wonder what is going on.
Reads like the plot line in the movie “The Juror”
Somewhere Fitz is quoted that he is going to out do Operation Greylord...Is he setting up a judge to indict?
He’s got people wired all over Chicago....ANd it’s truly a “who’s on first” situation....Only this time it’s “Who bribed first?”
Operation Greylord
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Operation Greylord was an investigation conducted jointly with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the IRS Criminal Investigation Division into corruption in the judiciary of Cook County, Illinois (the Chicago region).
The operation took place in the 1980s. Ninety-two people were indicted, including 17 judges, 48 lawyers, ten deputy sheriffs, eight policemen, eight court officials, and a member of the Illinois Legislature
I am sure that is his mission. Makes perfect sense.
Illinois: “Land of Lincoln” AKA “Land of Linked-CONS”
Operation Greylord
List of names,charges,sentences
http://www.angelfire.com/sc/Centner/Greylord.html
(This link has been removed...but Maggie can find anything.)
Maybe da Mayor?
Nah, he ain’t corrupt...
I don’t have any feeelings on Blago, but Fritz IMHO is a POS.
From:
http://nalert.blogspot.com/2008/03/chicago-democrats-and-chicago-mob.html
Most of America thinks Mayor Daley runs Chicago.Those on the inside know thats not the case.The man who runs Chicago from behind the scenes,since the early 1990s, is Alderman Ed Burke,Chairman of Chicagos Finance Committee.Burke went from being an errand boy for Alderman Roti to the most powerful elected figure in the state of Illinois.In a corrupt state like Illinois,the guy with the most money in his campaign fund is the man at the top.In Illinois,its not Chicagos Mayor Daley or Governor Blagojevich but Alderman Burke.
...The much-conflicted alderman says he meant to sit out the vote. Hed even sent a letter to the Chicago Board of Ethics in August 2003 saying he would abstain from any Council votes on Rezkos plan to put as many as 5,000 homes and stores on a 62-acre site along the Chicago River at Roosevelt Road.
But then Rezkos project came before the City Council on March 31, 2004, and Burke cast his vote in favor.
An error occurred, the alderman said in a written response to questions, and Rule 14 was not invoked.
That would be the Council rule under which aldermen are supposed to abstain from a vote when they have a conflict of interest.
Of course, its up to the alderman who has a conflict to invoke the rule.
Burkes legal work for Rezkos Rezmar Corp. is referenced in records on the 62-acre site Rezko wanted to develop with $140 million in city subsidies. The project fizzled, and Rezmar sold the land...
October 21, 2006
BY TIM NOVAK Staff Reporter
With the Daley administration pointing the finger at Ald. Edward M. Burke for the extraordinary rate of injury claims filed by patronage workers, Burke fired back Friday, saying his staff has done the best that it can to prevent abuse and fraud.
There is no excuse for anyone who is trying to abuse the system, said Burke, chairman of the City Council Finance Committee, which processes and pays all workers compensation claims filed by city employees.
I have confidence that the staff of the Committee on Finance has done the best that it can in an admittedly very difficult system, he said. If somebody has a better way to do this, then I welcome that information.
Burkes comments came amid a Chicago Sun-Times investigation that has found:
One in five patronage workers named on a secret clout list kept by Mayor Daleys then-patronage director filed workers compensation claims, an injury rate far greater than any occupation tracked by the federal Labor Department. Those claims have cost taxpayers more than $38 million.
Half of those patronage workers filed at least two injury claims, with a few filing a dozen or more.
An estimated 91 workers have been cleared to return to work but are sitting at home, collecting disability checks sometimes more than $40,000 a year waiting for the city to find them a less physically demanding job. Many have political connections
GOT a DOZEN or so more , if you are interested.
There is nothing good about the actions of Fitz......
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.