The Watchdogs
Investigations of government, politicians, education, business and issues affecting taxpayers and consumers.
Authorities say Oscar Manuel Gastelum Iribe, as head of the Beltran Leyva Organization, conspired to import tons of heroin and cocaine.
City Hall bureaucracy took center stage in former Ald. Ed Burke’s corruption trial Thursday as one of the finer disputed points in the case came to a head.
The move by the Cook County state’s attorney’s office comes weeks after WBEZ and the Sun-Times identified officers who appeared on leaked membership rolls for the anti-government group.
Prosecutors kicked off their case with Elmhurst University political science professor Constance Mixon, who began to explain Chicago city government to the jury.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall, prosecutors and defense attorneys have seated 12 jurors at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse who will hear evidence that was used in 2019 to level criminal charges against Burke in a push against old-school, Chicago-style corruption.
The unit had a backlog of 2,702 cases in July, which has nearly doubled to 5,116, an official told U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer.
Espinosa is a fugitive facing charges of drug conspiracy and money-laundering, accused of shipping thousands of pounds of cocaine to Chicago and other U.S. cities.
It’s a sign of how serious all sides are taking the sentencing of Madigan confidant Michael McClain, former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, ex-ComEd lobbyist John Hooker and onetime City Club President Jay Doherty.
The policy was approved Monday after Chicago police investigated but took little action against cops with connections to far-right groups including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters.
Following blueprint of other major cities, coalition of community groups pitches ideas to end racial inequities in police stops to City Council panel.
Burke’s trial was expected to last six weeks, but the slow jury selection and COVID-19 delay threaten to push the case deep into the holiday season.
The comments will kick off the highly anticipated case dating back five years. It upended Chicago’s mayoral campaign in 2019 — first through a raid of Burke’s offices, criminal charges, and the disclosure that Ald. Danny Solis spent two years recording Burke.
Several justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, seemed sympathetic toward James Rudisill, who says the VA thwarted his dream of attending Yale’s divinity school.
Potential jurors in Burke’s case have been spending time in the ceremonial courtroom of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, which is right across the hall from the public corruption display. Potential jurors could be seen walking through the hallway Tuesday.
Bernice Heiderman, a University of Illinois Chicago grad, died after contracting malaria while serving in East Africa. A Peace Corps doctor never tested her for the treatable illness.
Residents of the ward aren’t optimistic Burke’s trial — or even former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s federal trial next year — will clean up Chicago corruption.
When Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur explained that she did not expect Amtrak executive Ray Lang to make the comment, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall quickly asked, ‘What were you expecting him to say?’
Nearly a dozen former and current Peoples Gas workers say in the federal lawsuit that the company racially discriminated against Black employees in the Chicago area.
Special Agent Ryan McDonald’s testimony came nearly five years to the day after the FBI raided former Chicago Ald. Edward M. Burke’s offices Nov. 29, 2018.
Feds say giving council members “a local veto over proposals to build affordable housing” has meant it’s “rarely, if ever, constructed in the majority-white wards that have the least affordable housing.”
COVID-19 is arguably one reason it took so long for the feds to bring ex-Ald. Ed Burke to trial in the first place. The FBI raided his offices five years ago this week. Criminal charges followed in 2019, but the pandemic helped scuttle plans to begin the trial in 2021.
“I was relieved when they said it before they got in the house that I’m not in trouble,” Shoukat Dhanani testified. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have let them in.”
Mayor Brandon Johnson is moving ahead with plans to shelter up to 2,000 asylum-seekers despite protests in the Southwest Side community.
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