Patrick Fitzgerald leaves office, Media portrays Fitzgerald as fearless crime fighter, Patrick Fitzgerald protected Obama delayed Blagojevich prosecution
“Patrick Fitzgerald’s office knew from an informant and wiretaps beginning in December of 2003 that there was corruption in Blagojevich’s administration. The Chicago Tribune on October 25, 2005 reported about a federal grand jury investigation of the Blagojevich administration. The Chicago Tribune on August 5, 2006 reported that Stuart Levine was cooperating with the federal investigation. Stuart Levine was the key witness in Operation Board Games.
Why wasn’t Rod Blagojevich, Governor of IL, prosecuted before Tony Rezko, a businessman?
Why did Patrick Fitzgerald and the US Justice Department wait until December 2008 to arrest Rod Blagojevich?”…Citizen Wells
“Patrick Fitzgerald stated after the Blagojevich arrest: ‘I was not going to wait until March or April or May to get it all nice and tidy’
‘I think that would be irresponsible.’
Fitzgerald did wait to arrest Blagojevich and there are other words to describe his actions. Criminal, conspiracy and Chicago pay to play.”…Citizen Wells
“Antoin Rezko, …recently received a sentence of 126 months’ imprisonment for corrupt activity that he engaged in directly with Blagojevich or with Blagojevich’s tacit approval. Yet, Rezko: (a) held no elected office of trust;”…Patrick Fitzgerald’s Government Sentencing Memorandum
“The people in power,the first thing they have to do,they have to get control of the media.The perfect example was my case.The main person that I attempted to give information on,the person who was in charge of a lot of things the person who was able to pick all the judges,was one of my main targets.While he also happens to be the same person who’s able to give out all the money ,in the city, he’s Chairman of Finance Committee in Chicago.He was able to hire the U.S. Attorney who was supposed to prosecute him,pay him huge sums of money and he never got prosecuted.There was no explanation as to why he didn’t .He just was not prosecuted.To this day he continues there in that same position where he’s able to pick all the judges,he’s Chairman of the Democratic Judicial Slating Committee.He picks all the judges in Chicago.After I reported what I did and it was out there,that he was fixing murder cases and molesting cases, himself and his wife.His wife afterwards was appointed to the Illinois Supreme Court where she sits today.When she ran for re-election nobody dared oppose her.I mean that’s the basic problem with Chicago and why Chicago will not change,because the people in charge are the most powerful people,have the media in their pockets.”…FBI Informant and attorney Robert Cooley
With all of the attention on the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare, the sad state of the economy and the 2012 elections, Patrick Fitzgerald left his post with the US Justice Department with glowing remarks from the mainstream media.
From the Chicago SunTimes June 29, 2012.
“After 11 years as U.S. attorney in Chicago, Fitzgerald steps aside”
“The relentless U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois ended his 11-year run as Chicago’s top federal prosecutor Friday, retiring from an office that brought countless criminals to justice.
“I think his legacy will be that he raised the bar of what it means to be a U.S. Attorney in Chicago. It’s a great office with a great history. Pat came from outside and over 10 years built upon that history to leave the office better than he found it,” said Zachary Fardon, who prosecuted former Gov. George Ryan under Fitzgerald and now is a defense lawyer.
“He did that through hard work, but most important was his purity of intentions, the earnestness of his convictions, and his kindness of heart, all of which motivated everyone around him to be better. That’s hard to act to follow.”
The end of Fitzgerald’s run was a sprint to the finish.
On Thursday, his office announced a significant public corruption investigation against two former elected officials — Joseph Mario Moreno and Ambrosio Medrano.
Last week, the FBI arrested Raghuveer Nayak, a political fund-raiser who was a key figure in the Rod Blagojevich corruption case as well as a man close to U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.”
“Under Fitzgerald’s tenure, the state saw the dismantling of the power structures beneath two governors and then the convictions of the governors themselves — Ryan, a Republican, and Blagojevich, a Democrat.”
“From the Blagojevich Criminal Complaint.
Since approximately 2003, the government has been investigating allegations
of illegal activity occurring in State of Illinois government as part of the administration of Governor ROD BLAGOJEVICH. As further detailed below, the investigation has developed evidence that: (a) beginning not later than in or about 2002, ROD BLAGOJEVICH has conspired with multiple individuals”
From the Washington Post December 22, 2008.
“The wide-ranging public corruption probe that led to the arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich got its first big break when a grandmother of six walked into a breakfast meeting with shakedown artists wearing an FBI wire.
Pamela Meyer Davis had been trying to win approval from a state health planning board for an expansion of Edward Hospital, the facility she runs in a Chicago suburb, but she realized that the only way to prevail was to retain a politically connected construction company and a specific investment house. Instead of succumbing to those demands, she went to the FBI and U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald in late 2003 and agreed to secretly record conversations about the project.
Her tapes led investigators down a twisted path of corruption that over five years has ensnared a collection of behind-the-scenes figures in Illinois government, including Joseph Cari Jr., a former Democratic National Committee member, and disgraced businessman Antoin “Tony” Rezko.””
“On February 27, a Chicagoland website, Illinois PayToPlay, cited the star witness in the Operation Gambit trials of the early ’90s, Robert Cooley, as a primary source for the news that Daniel Frawley says he gave $400,000 in cash to Tony Rezko, who then passed it on to Barack Obama.
In case you missed Cooley’s story, James Peterson, writing for Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism, noted that “[i]n the mid-1980’s, Chicago Outfit Lawyer Robert Cooley voluntarily went undercover for the FBI as part of an investigation called Operation Gambat. Cooley wore a wire on, among others, [Alderman Ed] Burke’s good friend and made-man, Alderman Fred Roti. The Chief Judge of Cook County’s Chancery Court and an Assistant Senate Majority Leader of the Illinois State Senate were also targeted. Cooley’s work eventually led to the only judge in U.S. history being convicted of fixing a murder trial.”
Cooley is a Chicago legend.
As the star witness for the prosecution back then, Cooley’s credibility was validated by 26 convictions. Now, Cooley is back on the Chicago scene along with news that leaves a number of current, and former, Chicagoans with some splainin’ to do. Among the short list are these persons of interest.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald: It requires what one well-known politician once called “the willing suspension of disbelief” to think that the U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) was unaware of this allegation by Frawley. Did Fitzgerald’s staff investigate it? Or did this fall into the “Wired for Silence: Fitzgerald’s Rezko Watchers” arrangement, recently suggested in the Chicago Daily Observer, where three key moles close to Rezko never testified in Rezko’s trial, nor were any conversations they taped made public?
Chicago Sun-Times: A July 11, 2011 Times article stated that, “Details about Frawley’s cooperation with the U.S. attorney’s office, the FBI and the Illinois attorney general’s office can be gleaned from a 65-page court deposition he gave seven months ago in a legal-malpractice lawsuit that he filed against his former longtime lawyer, George Weaver. In the lawsuit, Frawley accuses Weaver of having overbilled him and telling him to ‘withhold certain information from the government’ when he was cooperating with authorities.”
What “certain information?” Did the Sun-Times aggressively pursue an answer to that question, or merely “glean”?
That 65-page deposition was executed on December 1, 2010 — but hold that thought.
Attorney Daniel F. Konicek: He represented Frawley’s former lawyer, George Weaver, in the deposition. The Times highlighted the following exchange between Konicek and Frawley: “Later in the deposition, Weaver’s lawyer, Daniel F. Konicek, asks Frawley about what specific information Weaver is supposed to have told Frawley to withhold from federal authorities. ‘I’m assuming the information is about the payments made by Rezko to Obama, so we know we’re talking about the right conversation, right?’ Konicek asks Frawley. Frawley doesn’t answer. So Konicek presses him: ‘Am I correct it was about Obama being paid by Rezko?’ Frawley replies: ‘I’m not answering that question, based upon my attorney’s instructions.'”
Where did that question come from? Konicek? Weaver? Did Konicek expect Frawley to answer?
Makes you wonder: was the whole deposition a kabuki dance intended to send a message to the USAO, and others, that Frawley knows some things, and might tell them to the world if he gets jammed up by the feds?
Back to Patrick Fitzgerald: Not two months after the December 2010 deposition, Frawley was hit with a bank fraud charge that was past the statute of limitations. Coincidence?
Or was it payback for filing the Weaver lawsuit, and a warning to Frawley that he’d better keep his mouth shut about the $400,000…and who knows what else? (Like maybe something about Companion Security?)”
“Chicago Big Media: Why did it take an obscure website to break this story when the Sun-Times has those three-musketeer journalists they call the WATCHDOGS?
And when the Trib has equally dogged sleuths like John Kass and John Chase?
Did either paper have knowledge concerning what Illinois Pay To Play reported and decide to sit on the information?
Thanks to the legendary Bob Cooley, yet again, some current and former Chicagoans got some ‘splainin’ to do. But, what we’ll most likely hear instead is the sound of crickets.”
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/some_splainin_to_do_in_chicago.html#ixzz20Aeedyxi
Patrick Fitzgerald.
Citizen WElls 