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Fardon, other Obama holdovers out as U.S. attorneys, Sessions says

Chicago Tribune - 3/11/2017

March 11--It appears that Chicago will have a new U.S. attorney soon.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions made it clear Friday that the U.S. Department of Justice does not intend to keep any of the 46 remaining U.S. attorney holdovers from the Obama administration in place while new nominees are chosen.

A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon had no comment Friday on the announcement.

The selection process traditionally has been headed by the senior member of the congressional delegation from the president's party -- currently Downstate U.S. Rep. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville -- but it's not clear if the Trump administration will adhere to that procedure.

If tradition is followed, Joel Levin, who has served as Fardon's first assistant for the past several years, would be named acting U.S. attorney while the candidate search is conducted.

Fardon was sworn in as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois in October 2013, five months after he was nominated by President Barack Obama.

He came in with big shoes to fill. His predecessor, Patrick Fitzgerald, had served for a decade and brought a series of landmark prosecutions against terrorist organizations, the Chicago Outfit, City Hall insiders and some of the state's highest-profile politicians, including former governors George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich.

Fardon took over the office amid increasing pressure to do more to help in the fight against Chicago's gangs, although he repeatedly pointed out in statements and speeches that law enforcement was only one piece of a much larger puzzle and that arrests alone would not solve the problem.

At a news conference at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse Thursday, perhaps his last as U.S. attorney, Fardon said that his office prosecuted more gun cases last year than any year since 2004. Gun charges accounted for 23 percent of the indictments handed down in 2016, he said.

"Anyone who suggests that we haven't stepped up and stretched our resources to help tamp down on gun violence is sorely mistaken," he said.

Under Fardon's watch, prosecutors won several large-scale gang prosecutions, including the trial of several leaders of the Hobos street gang alleged to be responsible for a slew of murders, kidnappings and other violence over the course of a decade.

Fardon has been much more low-key than Fitzgerald, holding only a handful of news conferences in his three and half years in office and often filing criminal charges without fanfare.

But he's had his share of blockbuster cases. In 2015, Fardon's office dropped a bombshell indictment accusing former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert of violating banking rules as part of an effort to conceal hush-money payments to cover up wrongdoing in his past. Eventually, it was revealed that Hastert had been accused of sexually abusing boys decades earlier when he was a teacher and wresting coach at Yorkville High School. Hastert pleaded guilty and currently is serving a 15-month prison sentence.

Fardon also made headlines when he convicted former Chicago Public Schools Superintendent Barbara Byrd-Bennett in a scheme to collect kickbacks for steering hundreds of millions of dollars in training contracts to SUPES Academy, where she had previously worked. Byrd-Bennett and two former SUPES executives have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.

And last year, Fardon personally prosecuted the case against John Bills, a former City Hall insider convicted of bribery, conspiracy, extortion and fraud for steering tens of millions of dollars in red light camera contracts to an Arizona company, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. -- a scheme first uncovered by the Chicago Tribune.

Fardon also was integral in the Justice Department's investigation into civil rights violations by the Chicago Police Department, the result of fallout from the court-ordered release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video in November 2015.

In January, shortly before President Donald Trump took office, Fardon stood with senior Washington officials to announce that the yearlong probe had uncovered a widespread practice of abuses, particularly toward minorities in the city's poorest neighborhoods. But it's unclear if that report will lead to a consent decree with the city given the Trump administration's law-and-order stance.

Meanwhile, Fardon's office also conducted a criminal grand jury probe into McDonald's shooting by white Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke, focusing particularly on if supervisors and other officers at the scene falsified reports or altered their statements to make the shooting appear justified.

No charges were brought, however.

jmeisner@chicago-tribune.com

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