Latest news with #PublicCorruptionandOrganizedCrimeSection
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘The end of an era': Top Madigan prosecutor known for bringing blockbuster mob, corruption cases, stepping down
Ailing Chicago mobster Frank 'The German' Schweihs was all scowls in June 2018 when he was pushed into a federal courtroom in a wheelchair for a hearing in his racketeering case and two young federal prosecutors he'd never seen before were staring back at him. The feared Outfit hit man first barked a homophobic remark at one of them, Markus Funk, and said, 'You makin' eyes at me?' Then Schweihs glared at Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu, who is Sikh and wears a turban. 'What are we, in some kind of foreign country?' he cracked to his lawyer loud enough for the entire courtroom to hear. If Bhachu was taken aback by the comment, he didn't show it, Funk recalled in an interview this week. He kept his arms crossed and remained expressionless, and the hearing went forward without missing a beat. 'Schweihs was trying to get under Amar's skin and got no reaction at all,' Funk told the Tribune. The long-forgotten episode may have been a blip in one of the biggest organized crime prosecutions in Chicago's history, but it was also a harbinger of Bhachu's unflappable style that would go on to serve him well as he rose through the ranks of the city's storied U.S. attorney's office. Known as a dogged but fair litigator, Bhachu learned from Outfit-busting legends like Gary Shapiro and Mitchell Mars before eventually taking over the Public Corruption and Organized Crime Section, leading a series of bombshell investigations into mobsters, lobbyists, corporate CEOs and crooked politicians that culminated with the conviction last month of former House Speaker Michael Madigan. That landmark case, it turns out, will be Bhachu's last. A 22-year-veteran prosecutor, Bhachu will step down from the U.S. attorney's office at the end of the day Friday, marking the end of a remarkable run under six different U.S. attorneys and acting bosses, from Patrick Fitzgerald to Morris Pasqual. No reason for Bhachu's departure was given, though whispers that he might leave after the Madigan case was over began circulating at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse last year, well before the Trump administration last month offered a buyout to federal employees. The timing came as a surprise to many, however, given that Madigan's case, which ended in a split verdict on Feb. 12, still has a ways to go. A forfeiture hearing has been set for June, and barring a successful appeal or decision to retry the deadlocked counts, a sentencing hearing will likely be slated further down the road. It also leaves the U.S. attorney's office without yet another veteran prosecutor at a time when the office is struggling with attrition, morale and productivity issues, along with unprecedented uncertainty coming out of Washington. Several insiders who spoke to the Tribune on the condition of anonymity said that of all the recent departures, Bhachu's stings the most. In a written statement, Pasqual, who has been Chicago's acting U.S. attorney since 2023, said Bhachu has served 'with distinction' and 'made our office better each and every day.' 'I cannot thank Amar enough for his unwavering, humble leadership and wise counsel over the past 21 years, and I wish him the best going forward,' Pasqual said. Earlier this week, Pasqual appointed Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker, a veteran of the Madigan trial as well as the 2023 case against former Ald. Edward Burke, as Bhachu's replacement. Regardless of his reasons for leaving, Bhachu had a fascinating final act. In January, he found himself face-to-face with Madigan, once the most powerful politician in the state, for a cross-examination for the ages. 'That's you laughing, sir, isn't it?' Bhachu asked Madigan after playing a now-infamous wiretapped recording where the former speaker chuckled about his friends making out 'like bandits.' Randall Samborn, a former federal prosecutor who served as chief spokesman for former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, said Bhachu 'represented a direct link' to the influence of mentors like Mars and Shapiro, particularly when it comes to mob and public corruption cases. 'His departure marks a generational divide from their combined legacy that stretches back a half-century,' Samborn said. 'Former prosecutors often regale the 'Days of the Giants,' but this might also be the end of an era.' Funk, who also worked under Mars and helped bring Bhachu over to the organized crime team back in the mid-2000s, said Bhachu quickly earned a reputation of his own for 'putting together big, sophisticated cases without fear or favor.' 'If I were a criminal and I knew I did something bad, the last person I would want to see show up in court on my case is Amar Bhachu,' said Funk, now a partner at Perkins Coie in Denver. Meteoric rise Bhachu, 53, was born in England and his family moved first to Canada and eventually to the U.S. when he was in grade school. His father, a mechanical engineer, and his mother, a trained midwife, were originally from Kenya. They settled on the East Coast, where Bhachu's father had a lengthy career with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Bhachu graduated from Georgetown University Law School in 1996 and moved to Chicago soon after, working in private practice before joining the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago in 2003. Like most young assistant U.S. attorneys in the office, Bhachu was first assigned to a general crimes unit, prosecuting a range of cases from narcotics to money laundering. One of his first cases to make news involved Adnan Aldarawsheh, of Willow Springs, a station manager for Royal Jordanian Airlines at O'Hare International Airport who helped run an illegal drug ring, using his position with the airline to help smuggle cash proceeds. Bhachu did a significant stint in what used to be called the Narcotics and Gang Section before he was tasked to the public corruption unit. He was incredibly productive even in the gung-ho era of the U.S. attorney's office in the mid-2000s. Court records show in 2004 alone, Bhachu filed 20 new criminal cases involving 37 named defendants. It was in those early days that Bhachu, despite his rather gruff demeanor in court, established himself as one of the office's premier pranksters, his former colleagues said, pulling stunts that might have alarmed bosses in today's world but in those days brought a sense of camaraderie to an office that has sky-high burnout potential. Jokes aside, however, Bhachu was also known for a quiet work ethic, much like his mentor, Mitch Mars, who died abruptly of cancer at age 55 after winning convictions in the landmark Family Secrets trial. Bhachu also adopted Mars' rather old-school recordkeeping, according to colleagues who spoke to the Tribune. Thick piles of papers were constantly growing in his office, at times making it difficult to squeeze in an extra chair. Adding to the throwback atmosphere were photos of some of Bhachu's more well-known targets tacked to the office walls, including Outfit bosses Joey 'The Clown' Lombardo and Frank 'The Breeze' Calabrese. He also keeps a photo of Mars taken after the Family Secrets verdict, which no one knew at the time would be Mars' last time in court. As he made his name in the office, Bhachu was among a group of hardworking assistants who were known to burn the late-night oil, staying in the office until midnight some nights working on cases, several former colleagues told the Tribune. One of them was Andrew Boutros, who like Bhachu was an up-and-comer in the office in the late 2000s — and a first-generation immigrant. He said Bhachu would sometimes walk past his office on the fifth floor of the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago's federal courthouse and see his light on and stop in for a chat. 'We'd just be bouncing ideas off each other, talking about our cases and legal issues,' said Boutros, who is now under consideration to become the U.S. attorney in Chicago. 'Amar has a tremendous work ethic.' That late-night ethos prevailed throughout Bhachu's tenure at the U.S. attorney's office. Even when the COVID era relaxed rules on being downtown, he would often be seen coming back into the courthouse with a coffee in hand long after his colleagues had punched out for the day. 'You always know Amar is going to cross the 't's and triple-dot every 'i,'' said longtime criminal defense attorney Joseph Lopez, who has represented a number of reputed mobsters and others prosecuted by Bhachu. 'He's very thorough. And he's a hammer. But he's a true believer. He believes he's protecting society through the law and doing what's best on behalf of the United States.' Lopez said that reputation was particularly well-known among underworld figures. 'I think when they found out he was leaving they probably had a party,' Lopez said. Targeting organized crime By far the biggest mob case Bhachu participated in was the landmark Family Secrets trial in 2007, which led to life sentences for several Chicago gangsters, including Lombardo, Calabrese, and James Marcello. The case was built on the turncoat testimony of Calabrese's brother, Nicholas, who admitted killing 14 people for the Outfit over the course of more than two decades. Bhachu had been set to take part in the case against Schweihs, which was severed from the other Family Secrets defendants due to Schweihs's ill health. But after the German's racist outburst in 2008, Bhachu never saw him again, as Schweihs died of cancer in a jail hospital in July 2008. But other blockbuster cases followed. In 2010, Bhachu led the prosecution of Cicero mob boss Michael 'The Large Guy' Sarno, Outlaw biker Mark Polchan and three others for running a lucrative illegal video poker racket, pulling off a string of armed robberies and planting a pipe bomb in front of a rival business cutting into their gambling turf. Soon after the Sarno case ended, Bhachu found himself with a stunning opportunity to bring down Steve Mandell, an ex-Chicago cop and mob-connected hit man who'd been a thorn in the side of law enforcement for years. In 2012, the FBI learned that Mandell was plotting to set up a torture and killing chamber in a Northwest Side storefront as part of a plot to kidnap, torture and dismember Chicago businessmen and steal their property and cash. One of his first targets was Steven Campbell, a real estate magnate Mandell jokingly referred to as 'Soupy,' who owned two dozen properties along Ogden Avenue and dealt largely in cash. The scheme was foiled with the help of undercover informant George Michael, a real estate mogul and former banker who was secretly recording for the FBI when Mandell introduced himself at a lunch at La Scarola on Grand Avenue and started talking about his plans. During Mandell's 2013 sentencing hearing, Bhachu said Mandell's attention to detail, from a 'circular saw to take the big bones out of Mr. Campbell's body' to 'goggles so blood splatter wouldn't hit him in the face,' made it clear that he'd participated in violent abductions before. 'I think the thing that really strikes one from listening to all the evidence in this case is the fact that (Mandell) actually takes pleasure — he takes pleasure — from hurting people,' Bhachu said. 'He likes it.' Michael told the Tribune this week that Bhachu always seemed to have a sense of humor even in the most tense and macabre situations. He chuckled as he recalled meetings in Bhachu's office where the prosecutor jumped up onto his desk to close the blinds on the tall windows. And he said he's still grateful to this day that Bhachu protected him when Mandell was allegedly trying to arrange Michael's murder from inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where Mandell was with street gang members awaiting trial. Law enforcement wired up Michael and caught a known gang member talking about Mandell's overtures. 'I knew if you were always telling Amar the truth, you had a friend,' Michael said. 'If you lied, you just lost your best friend. And he knew the difference.' Mandell was convicted of the grisly scheme to kidnap and murder Campbell and is serving life in prison. Enduring criticism While Bhachu earned the respect of most of the defense lawyers he battled in court, he also was criticized at times for taking an expansive and aggressive approach to federal fraud and bribery statutes, and for giving deals to cooperators who helped bring cases. By far the loudest criticism came in the U.S. attorney's office's handling of former Ald. Daniel Solis, who agreed to go undercover for the FBI after being confronted with his own corrupt deeds and made secret recordings of both Burke and Madigan that were instrumental in bringing down two of the most powerful Democratic politicians in Chicago history. Solis was given an unprecedented deferred prosecution deal for his efforts that will leave him without a felony conviction and collecting a six-figure city pension despite having admitted to taking bribes in his official capacity as Zoning Committee chairman. Some cried foul, including then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who said she was 'deeply offended' by the deal, as well as Solis' replacement as 25th Ward alderman, Byron Sigcho-Lopez, who asked U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood to consider Solis' 'rampant and unchecked corruption' when deciding whether to go along. Bhachu, however, argued strongly that Solis' cooperation was perhaps 'singular' even in the city's long history of political corruption, personally making hundreds of recordings and helping form the basis of government requests for wiretaps on others. 'A lot of people talk about cleaning up corruption, and often all it amounts to is talk,' Bhachu said. 'It's rare when someone actually delivers, and in this regard, Mr. Solis delivered.' Bhachu continued to defend Solis when Madigan's attorneys raked him over the coals in cross-examination in December, revealing new information that the alderman had taken a suitcase of cash from a Chinese businessman in Shanghai and received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from his sister that he never declared as income on his taxes. 'You cannot trust Danny Solis,' Madigan attorney Dan Collins told the jury in his closing argument. 'Cannot trust him. He's got his own agenda, and he's as sly as a fox.' Bhachu countered simply that some of the defense claims about Solis were 'overwrought' and that Solis' dealings with Madigan were caught on tape, marginalizing the importance of his credibility. Even Bhachu's critics had a respect for him, and knew that if their clients dared to take the stand, they were in for tough cross-examination, often done without glancing at notes — but far from winging it. 'He's got a really quick mind and a great wit,' Funk said. 'He's not one of those prosecutors who has 10 bullet points he reads from and sticks to the script. He knows how to live in the moment in front of a jury or a judge.' Not one to shout or pace around, Bhachu would get points across instead with rapid-fire questions from the lectern that kept defendants off script and often used their own words against them. Straight-faced, he'd also make it clear to the jury when a defendant tried to appear flippant or amused at his questions. At one point during his cross of Madigan, Bhachu asked the former speaker, 'Again, I'd like you to answer the question I've asked … you knew on this day the project was not in trouble?' When Madigan started to chuckle, Bhachu cut him off. 'Is there something funny about my question?' jmeisner@
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Veteran of Burke, Madigan trials to lead US attorney's office Public Corruption section
A veteran prosecutor who played a key role in the recent trials of ex-Ald. Edward Burke and former House Speaker Michael Madigan will be the next head of the U.S. attorney's office's Public Corruption and Organized Crime Section. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker has been named as the replacement of Amarjeet Bhachu, who is leaving the U.S. attorney's office on Friday after a 21-year career there. The public corruption section is one of the most storied and critical in the office, responsible for bringing high-profile cases over the years that decimated the leadership of the Chicago Outfit and sent a seemingly endless parade of elected officials to prison, from aldermen and county commissioners to former Govs. George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich. Streicker, 45, joined the office in 2009 and was one of the lead prosecutors in the 2011 trial of Tahawwur Rana, a Chicago businessman accused of helping Pakistani-American David Headley plot the deadly 2008 terror attack on a hotel in Mumbai. In 2023, Streicker was a member of the Burke prosecution team and delivered a memorable rebuttal argument telling jurors that the alderman's words caught on tape — statements like 'The cash register has not rung yet,' 'They can go (expletive) themselves,' and 'Did we land the tuna?' — provided the best avenue into his mind. 'What's the best evidence of Burke's intent? The words that came out of his mouth,' Streicker said. 'And those words were captured on recordings.' Last year, Streicker was the first lawyer to address the jury in Madigan's own landmark trial, beginning her two-hour opening statement by saying the case, which also included Madigan's longtime confidant and co-defendant, Michael McClain, was about 'corruption at the highest levels of state government.' 'Madigan abused his power and used the organization he led to engage in a pattern of corrupt conduct over and over and over again,' Streicker told jurors. 'Together the defendants engaged in a campaign of bribery …through which they seized opportunities to leverage Madigan's immense power in Illinois government to seek and accept bribes from people who needed something from the government. This racket went on for years.' The Public Corruption section has been headed by Bhachu since 2018. jmeisner@
Chicago Tribune
12-03-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Veteran of Burke, Madigan trials to lead US attorney's office Public Corruption section
A veteran prosecutor who played a key role in the recent trials of ex-Ald. Edward Burke and former House Speaker Michael Madigan will be the next head of the U.S. attorney's office's Public Corruption and Organized Crime Section. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker has been named as the replacement of Amarjeet Bhachu, who is leaving the U.S. attorney's office on Friday after a 21-year career there. The public corruption section is one of the most storied and critical in the office, responsible for bringing high-profile cases over the years that decimated the leadership of the Chicago Outfit and sent a seemingly endless parade of elected officials to prison, from aldermen and county commissioners to former Govs. George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich. Streicker, 45, joined the office in 2009 and was one of the lead prosecutors in the 2011 trial of Tahawwur Rana, a Chicago businessman accused of helping Pakistani-American David Headley plot the deadly 2008 terror attack on a hotel in Mumbai. In 2023, Streicker was a member of the Burke prosecution team and delivered a memorable rebuttal argument telling jurors that the alderman's words caught on tape — statements like 'The cash register has not rung yet,' 'They can go (expletive) themselves,' and 'Did we land the tuna?' — provided the best avenue into his mind. 'What's the best evidence of Burke's intent? The words that came out of his mouth,' Streicker said. 'And those words were captured on recordings.' Last year, Streicker was the first lawyer to address the jury in Madigan's own landmark trial, beginning her two-hour opening statement by saying the case, which also included Madigan's longtime confidant and co-defendant, Michael McClain, was about 'corruption at the highest levels of state government.' 'Madigan abused his power and used the organization he led to engage in a pattern of corrupt conduct over and over and over again,' Streicker told jurors. 'Together the defendants engaged in a campaign of bribery …through which they seized opportunities to leverage Madigan's immense power in Illinois government to seek and accept bribes from people who needed something from the government. This racket went on for years.' The Public Corruption section has been headed by Bhachu since 2018.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Chicago's storied U.S. attorney's office at crossroads as indictments dip, search for leader underway
The search for Chicago's 42nd U.S. attorney comes at a significant moment in history for an office long extolled as a model for the nation. After two years without a Senate-confirmed top federal prosecutor, the office has seen its productivity go into free fall, putting it behind much smaller outposts such as Rhode Island and even tiny Guam when it comes to key metrics kept by the district courts, records show. Through the turmoil of changing administrations and a global pandemic, scores of veteran prosecutors fled for private practice or judgeships, leaving large gaps in leadership. Morale has dipped amid a variety of issues, sources told the Tribune, including COVID-era hybrid work schedules that limited face-to-face time, a focus on one-off gun cases, and now a federal hiring freeze. The bleeding continued last week, with the announcement that Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu, the veteran boss of the Public Corruption and Organized Crime Section who led the prosecution of ex-House Speaker Michael Madigan, is leaving Friday. Now, an emboldened President Donald Trump is keeping good on his promise to remake the U.S. Justice Department, selecting loyalists Pam Bondi as attorney general and Kash Patel as FBI director and dramatically shifting priorities away from some of the more traditional investigative targets in Illinois. Other moves, such as the attempt to drop the corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams, which led to mass resignations in New York and Washington, have had ripple effects in Chicago as well, putting many, especially younger line attorneys, on edge. On Friday, two federal prosecutors in Manhattan who worked on the Adams case were placed on leave and escorted out of the building by federal law enforcement, according to multiple news reports. The galvanizing issues have caught the attention of Chicago's legal community, with judges, lawyers and court watchers wondering: Is the U.S. attorney's office in crisis? Maybe not. But it is certainly at a crossroads. 'This office for decades was one of the most productive in the country, and for it to be dead last in key metrics is shocking and embarrassing,' one former federal prosecutor and current criminal defense attorney, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Tribune. 'Given the steep decline, the selection of the next U.S. attorney in Chicago takes on even greater significance.' That search for a new boss is now officially underway. Last month, U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, a Peoria Republican, announced he was leading the process to find potential nominees to give to Trump, whose ultimate selection for the job would then go through a confirmation process in the U.S. Senate. In making his announcement, LaHood, a former state and federal prosecutor, noted the office's recent slump. He also said it will be critically important to select a top prosecutor who will follow Trump administration priorities on 'implementing and enforcing our immigration laws' and fighting 'rampant and rising criminal activity in Chicago.' That shift in direction has many in Chicago legal circles wondering if Chicago's next top federal prosecutor will have the same leeway as his predecessors. 'The directive from the Department of Justice has been to roll back white-collar investigations and focus on immigration and drug trafficking,' said Damon Cheronis, a criminal defense attorney and federal court veteran. 'Clearly, those will be the marching orders for the next U.S. attorney here.' The president hinted as much in his address last week to a joint session of Congress, saying the 'justice system has been turned upside down by radical left lunatics.' 'Many jurisdictions virtually ceased enforcing the law against dangerous repeat offenders while weaponizing law enforcement against political opponents, like me,' Trump said. The shift isn't just confined to the current White House. The U.S. Supreme Court has for years been cooling on federal fraud prosecutions, issuing a series of rulings curtailing the use of honest service and bribery statutes to go after corruption. In December, conservative Justice Samuel Alito left some in Chicago's legal community scratching their heads when he said during oral arguments in a fraud case that 'the court really doesn't like the federalization of white-collar prosecutions' and wants to see them 'done in state court and is really hostile to this whole enterprise.' It's also not lost on anyone in Chicago's legal community that the biggest reason the city has been without a permanent leader in the U.S. attorney's office since 2023 is because then-Sen. JD Vance, now the vice president, blocked the Biden administration's nominee as part of a political protest. Regardless of any change in mission, many attorneys who spoke to the Tribune about the issue said the next U.S. attorney will need to be someone with a deep institutional knowledge of the office who can fire up the troops. 'They need to find someone who will earn the respect of the people in that office, all the line assistants,' said Joseph Lopez, a Chicago attorney who has been defending cases at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse since the mid-1980s. 'A hands-on administrator, checking up on what you're doing … coming down and watching trials.' Some within the office, however, said that while new leadership will energize the office, the attitude among the rank-and-file has largely been business as usual — despite all the distractions. 'It has not slowed us down,' said one veteran assistant U.S. attorney who asked not to be named. 'We believe in the mission. People are still really busy, and they really care.' For years, the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago, which currently has a $35 million annual budget and about 140 prosecutors and hundreds more support staff members, was one of the most productive in the country, both in the high-profile cases it brought against politicians, terrorists, gang leaders and corporate thieves, as well as in the sheer number of indictments. At its zenith under former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who was once described by a colleague as 'Eliot Ness with a Harvard degree,' the office was filing more than seven indictments per prosecutor per year, or some 1,000 annually, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. District Courts. Another metric often used by the courts counts the number of newly indicted defendants each year divided by the number of active judgeships — not sitting judges — in the district. By that score, too, Chicago was near the top every year, according to the statistics. Some of that productivity was simply a sign of the times. Street gangs were more organized and focused on drug trafficking, which led to many takedowns where dozens of defendants would be charged, pumping up the number of prosecutions. Fitzgerald also stressed the Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative, which led to many cases filed against felons caught carrying guns. The numbers held steady immediately after Fitzgerald's departure in 2012 but then began to decline slowly, first under U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon and later under his successor, John Lausch, who was nominated in 2017 during Trump's first term, the data shows. In 2019, the second full year of Lausch's term, the U.S. attorney's office filed 39 indictments per judgeship, down about 16% from Fitzgerald's top years, records show. The number continued to decline as the COVID-19 pandemic set in, virtually closing the courthouse and leading to a slow recovery of in-person proceedings. In 2020, there were 38 indictments per judge, the records show. In 2021, as the pandemic continued to disrupt the courts, it fell again to 31. But once operations were back to normal, the numbers did not improve. In fact, in both 2022 and 2023, there were only 23 indictments per judgeship. And in 2024, it hit rock bottom at 19. That figure puts the Chicago office dead last among the 94 federal court districts in the country — lower than Rhode Island, which saw 33 indictments per judge filed in 2024, ranking it 85th, and Guam, the U.S. Pacific island territory with just one sitting judge, which is ranked 68th. The only districts even close to that bad in 2024 were Hawaii, which has only four judges, and the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which is comparable in size to Chicago's office and landed 21 indictments per judge, the data shows. The Northern District of Illinois also ranked dead last in 2024 in another important stat: the average length of time it takes a criminal case to get to a disposition — be it a guilty plea or trial. In Chicago, that figure stood at 33.3 months, more than double what it was just five years ago, the district court records show. The records show the national median time for a case to be adjudicated is just under 11 months. Certainly, the length of time cases drag on can't be blamed on the U.S. attorney's office alone. Several attorneys who spoke to the Tribune said litigation here tends to be more complex and often gets bogged down in electronic discovery that takes months to sift through, leading to agreed continuances. There is a more robust defense bar, leading to more pretrial motions. Also, judges here also are often inundated with filings in their civil cases — which Chicago still ranks near the top in the nation — and trial schedules can be hard to manage. In a statement to the Tribune, U.S. District Chief Judge Virginia Kendall said judges are constantly juggling their responsibilities for 'active and timely case management' with the needs of the attorneys and defendants. 'Due to the complexity of the cases in our court, it is common for defense attorneys and the United States attorney's office to jointly request extensions of time to review the voluminous evidence and prepare their case,' Kendall wrote. '… If a defendant and defense attorney were to request a speedy trial under the Act with no exclusions, our judges will provide that trial.' Kendall also noted the Northern District of Illinois is one of the busiest federal districts in the country, and judges here 'routinely try multi-defendant cases that last over weeks or even months.' 'The statistics do not fully take account of the complexity of criminal cases typically brought in a district of our size,' Kendall wrote, adding that the median disposition time here compares with districts of similar size and in major metropolitan areas, including Philadelphia and Brooklyn, New York. The records show criminal cases in the federal courthouse in Brooklyn indeed took a median of 29.8 months to be adjudicated in 2024, just three and a half months better than Chicago. Philadelphia came in at 20.5 months, the records show. In some ways, the data showing the marked slowdown in prosecutions does not seem to match what the public sees day to day. That's largely due to a series of far-ranging, high-profile public corruption cases that ensnared more than a dozen elected officials, from state legislators and suburban mayors to two of the all-time Democratic heavyweights of the state, ex-Speaker Madigan and former Ald. Edward Burke. But as those cases were unfolding in the news, so was the intrigue in who would continue to lead the U.S. attorney's office. Lausch, a veteran prosecutor from Joliet, was nominated by Trump in 2017 and held the post during the early portion of the Biden administration due to a bipartisan call to keep him on as those very political corruption investigations moved forward. Lausch officially stepped down March 11, 2023, days before the 'ComEd Four' case alleging a scheme by the utility giant to bribe Madigan went to trial. Lausch's departure put his deputy, longtime Assistant U.S. Attorney Morris 'Sonny' Pasqual, in charge as acting U.S. attorney — a position that's supposed to last only a few months until a new boss is nominated and confirmed. Meanwhile, April Perry, a former federal prosecutor, was nominated by President Joe Biden to succeed Lausch as the first woman to ever hold the office. And though Perry was confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2023, she never was confirmed by a full vote in the Senate. That's because of a blanket hold put on all U.S. attorney nominees by Vance, of Ohio, who said he held up final votes on the Senate floor to protest the U.S. Justice Department's criminal investigations of Trump. Perry's nomination was eventually pulled and she was instead selected to be a U.S. District Court judge in Chicago, a role she began last year. Most of the lawyers who spoke to the Tribune said Pasqual, a 33-year veteran of the U.S. attorney's office who was the chief of the Narcotics and Gang Section before becoming Lausch's top assistant, has done an adequate job acting boss, holding the office together under unusual circumstances while the political drama played out. But the job of an acting U.S. attorney is, by design, a placeholder, not someone tasked to bring vision to the office or dictate new policy. And it's certainly not a role that should last two years or more. 'He's the assistant coach who came off the bench,' Lopez said. 'He really can't start any new game plans. He's been in limbo as much as the entire office.' A spokesman for Pasqual declined to comment on the office's productivity or the leadership search. Meanwhile, several sources have told the Tribune that a number of former Chicago federal prosecutors are already being considered as part of LaHood's ongoing search. Among them: Andrew Boutros, now the co-chair of the government investigations and white-collar group at Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP; Jeffrey Cramer, senior litigation counsel at the Department of Justice; Paul Tzur, now a partner at Blank Rome LLP; and Mark Schneider, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis. Ultimately, Trump is under no obligation to pick a nominee turned up in LaHood's search. But so far, lawyers who spoke to the Tribune said they're happy the list includes candidates who know what makes Chicago's U.S. attorney's office tick. 'I am pleased that the names reported so far as being under consideration are well-acquainted with the storied history of the office,' a veteran criminal defense attorney said. jmeisner@
Chicago Tribune
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Chicago's storied U.S. attorney's office at crossroads as indictments dip, search for leader underway
The search for Chicago's 42nd U.S. attorney comes at a significant moment in history for an office long extolled as a model for the nation. After two years without a Senate-confirmed top federal prosecutor, the office has seen its productivity go into free fall, putting it behind much smaller outposts such as Rhode Island and even tiny Guam when it comes to key metrics kept by the district courts, records show. Through the turmoil of changing administrations and a global pandemic, scores of veteran prosecutors fled for private practice or judgeships, leaving large gaps in leadership. Morale has dipped amid a variety of issues, sources told the Tribune, including COVID-era hybrid work schedules that limited face-to-face time, a focus on one-off gun cases, and now a federal hiring freeze. The bleeding continued last week, with the announcement that Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu, the veteran boss of the Public Corruption and Organized Crime Section who led the prosecution of ex-House Speaker Michael Madigan, is leaving Friday. Now, an emboldened President Donald Trump is keeping good on his promise to remake the U.S. Justice Department, selecting loyalists Pam Bondi as attorney general and Kash Patel as FBI director and dramatically shifting priorities away from some of the more traditional investigative targets in Illinois. Other moves, such as the attempt to drop the corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams, which led to mass resignations in New York and Washington, have had ripple effects in Chicago as well, putting many, especially younger line attorneys, on edge. On Friday, two federal prosecutors in Manhattan who worked on the Adams case were placed on leave and escorted out of the building by federal law enforcement, according to multiple news reports. The galvanizing issues have caught the attention of Chicago's legal community, with judges, lawyers and court watchers wondering: Is the U.S. attorney's office in crisis? Maybe not. But it is certainly at a crossroads. 'This office for decades was one of the most productive in the country, and for it to be dead last in key metrics is shocking and embarrassing,' one former federal prosecutor and current criminal defense attorney, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Tribune. 'Given the steep decline, the selection of the next U.S. attorney in Chicago takes on even greater significance.' Seeking leadership That search for a new boss is now officially underway. Last month, U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, a Peoria Republican, announced he was leading the process to find potential nominees to give to Trump, whose ultimate selection for the job would then go through a confirmation process in the U.S. Senate. In making his announcement, LaHood, a former state and federal prosecutor, noted the office's recent slump. He also said it will be critically important to select a top prosecutor who will follow Trump administration priorities on 'implementing and enforcing our immigration laws' and fighting 'rampant and rising criminal activity in Chicago.' That shift in direction has many in Chicago legal circles wondering if Chicago's next top federal prosecutor will have the same leeway as his predecessors. 'The directive from the Department of Justice has been to roll back white-collar investigations and focus on immigration and drug trafficking,' said Damon Cheronis, a criminal defense attorney and federal court veteran. 'Clearly, those will be the marching orders for the next U.S. attorney here.' The president hinted as much in his address last week to a joint session of Congress, saying the 'justice system has been turned upside down by radical left lunatics.' 'Many jurisdictions virtually ceased enforcing the law against dangerous repeat offenders while weaponizing law enforcement against political opponents, like me,' Trump said. The shift isn't just confined to the current White House. The U.S. Supreme Court has for years been cooling on federal fraud prosecutions, issuing a series of rulings curtailing the use of honest service and bribery statutes to go after corruption. In December, conservative Justice Samuel Alito left some in Chicago's legal community scratching their heads when he said during oral arguments in a fraud case that 'the court really doesn't like the federalization of white-collar prosecutions' and wants to see them 'done in state court and is really hostile to this whole enterprise.' It's also not lost on anyone in Chicago's legal community that the biggest reason the city has been without a permanent leader in the U.S. attorney's office since 2023 is because then-Sen. JD Vance, now the vice president, blocked the Biden administration's nominee as part of a political protest. Regardless of any change in mission, many attorneys who spoke to the Tribune about the issue said the next U.S. attorney will need to be someone with a deep institutional knowledge of the office who can fire up the troops. 'They need to find someone who will earn the respect of the people in that office, all the line assistants,' said Joseph Lopez, a Chicago attorney who has been defending cases at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse since the mid-1980s. 'A hands-on administrator, checking up on what you're doing … coming down and watching trials.' Some within the office, however, said that while new leadership will energize the office, the attitude among the rank-and-file has largely been business as usual — despite all the distractions. 'It has not slowed us down,' said one veteran assistant U.S. attorney who asked not to be named. 'We believe in the mission. People are still really busy, and they really care.' Drop in indictments For years, the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago, which currently has a $35 million annual budget and about 140 prosecutors and hundreds more support staff members, was one of the most productive in the country, both in the high-profile cases it brought against politicians, terrorists, gang leaders and corporate thieves, as well as in the sheer number of indictments. At its zenith under former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who was once described by a colleague as 'Eliot Ness with a Harvard degree,' the office was filing more than seven indictments per prosecutor per year, or some 1,000 annually, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. District Courts. Another metric often used by the courts counts the number of newly indicted defendants each year divided by the number of active judgeships — not sitting judges — in the district. By that score, too, Chicago was near the top every year, according to the statistics. Some of that productivity was simply a sign of the times. Street gangs were more organized and focused on drug trafficking, which led to many takedowns where dozens of defendants would be charged, pumping up the number of prosecutions. Fitzgerald also stressed the Project Safe Neighborhoods initiative, which led to many cases filed against felons caught carrying guns. The numbers held steady immediately after Fitzgerald's departure in 2012 but then began to decline slowly, first under U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon and later under his successor, John Lausch, who was nominated in 2017 during Trump's first term, the data shows. In 2019, the second full year of Lausch's term, the U.S. attorney's office filed 39 indictments per judgeship, down about 16% from Fitzgerald's top years, records show. The number continued to decline as the COVID-19 pandemic set in, virtually closing the courthouse and leading to a slow recovery of in-person proceedings. In 2020, there were 38 indictments per judge, the records show. In 2021, as the pandemic continued to disrupt the courts, it fell again to 31. But once operations were back to normal, the numbers did not improve. In fact, in both 2022 and 2023, there were only 23 indictments per judgeship. And in 2024, it hit rock bottom at 19. That figure puts the Chicago office dead last among the 94 federal court districts in the country — lower than Rhode Island, which saw 33 indictments per judge filed in 2024, ranking it 85th, and Guam, the U.S. Pacific island territory with just one sitting judge, which is ranked 68th. The only districts even close to that bad in 2024 were Hawaii, which has only four judges, and the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which is comparable in size to Chicago's office and landed 21 indictments per judge, the data shows. A slower court path The Northern District of Illinois also ranked dead last in 2024 in another important stat: the average length of time it takes a criminal case to get to a disposition — be it a guilty plea or trial. In Chicago, that figure stood at 33.3 months, more than double what it was just five years ago, the district court records show. The records show the national median time for a case to be adjudicated is just under 11 months. Certainly, the length of time cases drag on can't be blamed on the U.S. attorney's office alone. Several attorneys who spoke to the Tribune said litigation here tends to be more complex and often gets bogged down in electronic discovery that takes months to sift through, leading to agreed continuances. There is a more robust defense bar, leading to more pretrial motions. Also, judges here also are often inundated with filings in their civil cases — which Chicago still ranks near the top in the nation — and trial schedules can be hard to manage. In a statement to the Tribune, U.S. District Chief Judge Virginia Kendall said judges are constantly juggling their responsibilities for 'active and timely case management' with the needs of the attorneys and defendants. 'Due to the complexity of the cases in our court, it is common for defense attorneys and the United States attorney's office to jointly request extensions of time to review the voluminous evidence and prepare their case,' Kendall wrote. '… If a defendant and defense attorney were to request a speedy trial under the Act with no exclusions, our judges will provide that trial.' Kendall also noted the Northern District of Illinois is one of the busiest federal districts in the country, and judges here 'routinely try multi-defendant cases that last over weeks or even months.' 'The statistics do not fully take account of the complexity of criminal cases typically brought in a district of our size,' Kendall wrote, adding that the median disposition time here compares with districts of similar size and in major metropolitan areas, including Philadelphia and Brooklyn, New York. The records show criminal cases in the federal courthouse in Brooklyn indeed took a median of 29.8 months to be adjudicated in 2024, just three and a half months better than Chicago. Philadelphia came in at 20.5 months, the records show. In limbo despite big cases In some ways, the data showing the marked slowdown in prosecutions does not seem to match what the public sees day to day. That's largely due to a series of far-ranging, high-profile public corruption cases that ensnared more than a dozen elected officials, from state legislators and suburban mayors to two of the all-time Democratic heavyweights of the state, ex-Speaker Madigan and former Ald. Edward Burke. But as those cases were unfolding in the news, so was the intrigue in who would continue to lead the U.S. attorney's office. Lausch, a veteran prosecutor from Joliet, was nominated by Trump in 2017 and held the post during the early portion of the Biden administration due to a bipartisan call to keep him on as those very political corruption investigations moved forward. Lausch officially stepped down March 11, 2023, days before the 'ComEd Four' case alleging a scheme by the utility giant to bribe Madigan went to trial. Lausch's departure put his deputy, longtime Assistant U.S. Attorney Morris 'Sonny' Pasqual, in charge as acting U.S. attorney — a position that's supposed to last only a few months until a new boss is nominated and confirmed. Meanwhile, April Perry, a former federal prosecutor, was nominated by President Joe Biden to succeed Lausch as the first woman to ever hold the office. And though Perry was confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2023, she never was confirmed by a full vote in the Senate. That's because of a blanket hold put on all U.S. attorney nominees by Vance, of Ohio, who said he held up final votes on the Senate floor to protest the U.S. Justice Department's criminal investigations of Trump. Perry's nomination was eventually pulled and she was instead selected to be a U.S. District Court judge in Chicago, a role she began last year. Most of the lawyers who spoke to the Tribune said Pasqual, a 33-year veteran of the U.S. attorney's office who was the chief of the Narcotics and Gang Section before becoming Lausch's top assistant, has done an adequate job acting boss, holding the office together under unusual circumstances while the political drama played out. But the job of an acting U.S. attorney is, by design, a placeholder, not someone tasked to bring vision to the office or dictate new policy. And it's certainly not a role that should last two years or more. 'He's the assistant coach who came off the bench,' Lopez said. 'He really can't start any new game plans. He's been in limbo as much as the entire office.' A spokesman for Pasqual declined to comment on the office's productivity or the leadership search. Meanwhile, several sources have told the Tribune that a number of former Chicago federal prosecutors are already being considered as part of LaHood's ongoing search. Among them: Andrew Boutros, now the co-chair of the government investigations and white-collar group at Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP; Jeffrey Cramer, senior litigation counsel at the Department of Justice; Paul Tzur, now a partner at Blank Rome LLP; and Mark Schneider, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis. Ultimately, Trump is under no obligation to pick a nominee turned up in LaHood's search. But so far, lawyers who spoke to the Tribune said they're happy the list includes candidates who know what makes Chicago's U.S. attorney's office tick. 'I am pleased that the names reported so far as being under consideration are well-acquainted with the storied history of the office,' a veteran criminal defense attorney said.
