Federal prosecutors desire a decide to ship a longtime Dorothy Brown employee to jail for greater than two years after they stated she lied to a grand jury, “threw a wrench in the wheels of justice and ground them to a halt.”
They additionally stated the lies Beena Patel informed the grand jury investigating job-selling allegations within the workplace of Brown, the clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County, “directly impacted the government’s ability to charge those most culpable in the illegal activity.”
It’s been 4 years because the FBI seized a cellular phone from Brown. Brown nonetheless denies wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crime. But Patel’s trial earlier this 12 months made clear Brown had been squarely within the feds’ sights.
By mid-2015, Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather McShain stated at trial, the FBI and a grand jury have been “well over a year into an investigation of Dorothy Brown” over allegations that Brown had been promoting jobs, promotions and pay raises inside her workplace.
Patel derailed that investigation by mendacity repeatedly to the grand jury, the feds say. A trial jury convicted Patel in April. Prosecutors requested U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis to condemn Patel to 30 months in jail in a memo filed Tuesday.
The feds’ investigation centered partially round a $15,000 cost by Sivasubramani Rajaram allegedly to land a job on the clerk’s workplace. The feds say Rajaram made a $5,000 money cost at a gathering on the Corner Bakery throughout from the Daley Center. But when prosecutors requested Patel about that assembly in entrance of the grand jury, they stated Patel gave deceptive solutions.
“She attempted to minimize her own involvement by stating that Rajaram slid the envelope containing $5,000 in cash directly to the Clerk,” McShain wrote in Tuesday’s memo.
Prosecutors stated it was Patel who accepted the money.
“By then, her testimony had been so misleading and had contradicted itself in so many respects that it was difficult for the grand jury to credit or follow anything that she said,” McShain wrote. McShain stated the lies, “successfully derailed the grand jury’s investigation of this bribe payment.”
Patel’s protection attorneys have filed their very own memo prematurely of her sentencing Tuesday however they persuaded the decide to maintain it beneath seal.
Rajaram was sentenced in 2017 to probation in his personal perjury case. But McShain wrote within the memo that Rajaram’s sentence was attributable to his well being. She belittled the notion that Patel ought to obtain the identical sentence.
“A sentence of probation will send a message to future witnesses in public corruption cases that it is okay to lie under oath because, even if you get successfully prosecuted, you will still walk free,” McShain wrote.