It's now becoming clear to
people around Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley that Daley himself may very well
have a fat federal target on his back.
Up until last week, most
people figured that the mayor would never be personally touched by the ongoing
federal probe into his administration. Since nobody thought that Daley ever
took any tainted money, they believed there was no reason for the feds to chase
him. Hizzoner's main danger was political, not legal, the thinking went.
It wasn't the two federal
charges themselves last week against two longtime Daley aides that convinced
people of the mayor's potential vulnerability. The two men were charged with
crimes relating to a single instance of promoting a temporary, low-level city
employee to permanent status. The criminal charges, taken by themselves,
certainly didn't come close to reflecting the US Attorney's claim of
"massive fraud" in the city's hiring practices.
You'd think if there was,
indeed, massive fraud, the feds would have thrown the book at Bridgeport
natives Robert Sorich and Patrick Slattery. Instead, they were hit with just
one count each for mailing an existing city employee a notification of promotion.
And some of the other
alleged misdeeds documented in the federal complaints (for which no one was
charged) were a bit of a stretch. Sorich broke a rule to help a soldier
fighting in Iraq win a promotion, for instance. Sorich allegedly gave the
soldier a top score on a job interview, even though it's alleged that Sorich
never interviewed the guy. You won't find many people in Chicago who think that
was such a terrible thing. And the feds have Sorich on tape urging an informant
to tell the truth to investigators. Hardly the picture of a nasty criminal.
But the way US Attorney
Patrick Fitzgerald laid everything on the table last week, it's certainly
starting to look like the feds are setting their sites on Daley himself. Sorich
was the mayor's patronage chief, a longtime family friend and staunch political
ally who worked for Daley's Office of Inte rgovernmental Affairs, the single
most politically powerful office in the entire Daley administration. And
Fitzgerald laid out a conspiracy that goes far beyond what Sorich and Slattery
are alleged to have done to date. The essence of this conspiracy was summed up
in the complaint against Sorich:
"(Sorich)
participated in a scheme in which he and his co-schemers routinely manipulated
the interview and selection process for certain City employment positions by
conducting sham interviews, falsely inflating interview scores, and otherwise
guaranteeing that certain pre-selected candidates who were favored by top City
officials would win the employment positions, often to the exclusion of equally
or more qualified candidates."
To drive home the point
that this is a long-standing conspiracy perpetrated over many years by many
different people, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald claimed the investigation
uncovered a "massive fraud in the hiring process going back more than a
decade."
The real worry among Daley
types is that if Fitzgerald manages to make a connection between the alleged
hiring conspiracy and Daley or between the conspiracy and the mayor's campaign
fund, then, like George Ryan's campaign fund before him, a RICO (Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act) charge could quickly follow.
Originally used to break
up the Mafia's tightly knit organization, RICO is a devastating and amazingly
effective prosecutorial tool. Once a judge allows a RICO charge, it is, by
design, extremely difficult to fend off. If Fitzgerald is, indeed, targeting
Daley, then RICO could be his best shot. And as we've all learned by now,
Fitzgerald is certainly fearless and bullheaded enough to take that step. He
doesn't care that Daley is the King of All Chicago. He's not running for
anything.
And, unlike the George
Ryan RICO case, a lot more people are playing ball with the feds on this Daley
thing. Fitzgerald claimed that at least 30 people were actively cooperating in
the current investigation, including some former Daley agency chiefs and
several personnel directors. During the RICO prosecution of the Ryan campaign,
almost nobody came forward to talk.
Keep in mind that after
Ryan's campaign was convicted, Fitzgerald turned his sights on Ryan himself.
It's still very early and a lot can happen in the coming months, but the big
question now isn't whether the ever-escalating City Hall scandal forces Rich
Daley out of the 2007 mayor's race, but whether it ultimately leads to his
conviction.
-30-
Rich Miller also publishes
Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter. He can be reached at
capitolfax.blogspot.com