I’m pretty sure that no one is surprised, but with the election in hind-sight, G-Ry is about to be indicted. Rich Miller covers the essential details.
There was some question as to whether G-Ry’s daughter was the key or Fawell. Apparently Fawell will bring down his old boss.
Never trust a man who hires a $2 hooker.
Read the story above for a good start, but this story could break much harder over the next couple years. Both parties in Illinois have a lot they don’t want anyone to know about, but one issue that may yet come out with someone like Fawell on the hook is the ties of Republican to black street gangs. Everyone understands that Democrats have some ties to such gangs through GOTV efforts. Because the story is tough to nail even on the modest efforts of Democrats, nothing much has broken publicly.
Gator Bradley and Larry Hoover, Gangster Disciples, are tied to the 1990 Edgar election. No one will say exactly what was going on, but the conspiracy theory alledges that Hoover and Bradley worked with Edgar’s people to get him elected. It is hard to imagine Jim Edgar knowing about this personally, but the key question no one that I know of has nailed down is whether these guys were flown around on election day 1990 on state planes. The payoff was supposedly continued control of the Illinois Prison system by the gangs.
Some of this started to come out when the Richard Speck tapes emerged and the public got an inside look at how out of control the state’s prisons were. If anyone remembers the hearings, they were stopped pretty quickly. No one in any either party wanted to know what would come out.
Fawell is the kind of guy who can probably lead federal prosecutors to ask the right questions of the right people. I have little doubt Patrick Fitzgerald has the guts to do so. The people of Illinois deserve a full investigation. I doubt there is a tie to that and the Harold Washington Party stalking horse candidate that some Republicans employed, but I guess it is possible. If so, this could hit hard and fast beginning in January.
Chalk one up for Petey.