From the Chicago Sun Times

Prosecutor who's after Ryan moving fast on City Hall
January 5, 2005
BY MARK BROWN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Yesterday's news collided with tomorrow's news Tuesday at the Dirksen Federal Building, or perhaps more accurately, they passed each other noisily in the lobby.
Headed in one direction was the long-running story of the federal case against former Gov. George Ryan, so long in gestation that it stands as yesterday's news even though he's yet to go to trial.
Going the other way was the still percolating investigation into corruption in Mayor Daley's administration, which now promises to dominate tomorrow's news for at least the remainder of the mayor's term and possibly beyond.
It was an opportunity to see what the two cases have in common. Plenty, it's becoming clear.
The daily court calendar put the cases a couple of hours apart, which was good, because one of the common denominators is that they are being prosecuted by the same young assistant U.S. attorney, Patrick Collins, whose dogged pursuit of the Ryan case has made him top gun in Patrick Fitzgerald's office.
After logrolling a licenses-for-bribes scandal involving low-level secretary of state employees and truck drivers into a wide-ranging racketeering indictment against Ryan himself, Collins and the federal agents who do the digging seem to be applying the same recipe to the City Hall probe.
Feds already caught big fish
If anything, they're further along than at the same point in the secretary of state investigation.
Already there's a big catch, former Deputy Water Commissioner Donald Tomczak, the headliner among a group of defendants arraigned Tuesday morning before District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan on charges they had their own racketeering enterprise going in the Water Department -- extorting bribes in exchange for trucking business.
Collins advised the defendants' lawyers not to get carried away with their initial paperwork, promising a "substantial addition" to the indictment within 60 days that will bring more charges and probably more defendants.
And that's just from the Water Department end of the Hired Truck scandal, which has generated separate cases in the Transportation Department. The possibility of more City Hall racketeering charges looms large.
Throw in the federal case against members of the Duff family, slated to go to trial later this month on charges they set up phony women- and minority-owned businesses to get city contracts, and you can see that the mayor isn't going to be putting the bad news behind him anytime soon, if ever.
It's almost impossible to remember when the Ryan case was at the same stage, back when he was just taking over as governor.
A government filing released Tuesday afternoon over the objections of Ryan's lawyers replowed much of the ground that's been covered since the first licenses-for-bribes charges in 1998, but it also fleshed out some of the latest evidence that prosecutors plan to use to finally close the loop on the former governor.
The most important addition to their case is the testimony of Ryan's convicted former top aide, Scott Fawell, who will help put Ryan squarely in the middle of manipulating decisions in the secretary of state's office that allegedly enabled two of his pals, Larry Warner and Ron Swanson, to make millions of dollars, most of that going to Warner.
Interestingly, though, Fawell's cooperation doesn't appear to have advanced the government's assertion that Warner and Swanson were taking care of Ryan in return. There was no indication in Tuesday's filing that Fawell has told investigators he ever saw them give money to Ryan.
Instead, prosecutors have cobbled together numerous other financial benefits that they say Ryan or more commonly family members received from Warner -- loans, trips and gifts -- along with circumstantial evidence about Swanson making large cash withdrawals before meetings with Ryan, the admissibility of which is sure to be challenged.
Are Chicago Democrats tougher?
Ryan and Warner are scheduled to go trial in March, and while I've always maintained it will never get that far -- expecting the always pragmatic Ryan to cut a deal before putting himself and his family through the six-month trial ordeal -- you have to allow for the possibility that he still doesn't think he did anything wrong.
A question mark in the City Hall investigation is whether the feds will have as much luck flipping defendants into cooperating witnesses, since Chicago Democrats fancy themselves as being tougher than their state Republican counterparts. So far, no Donald Udstuen has emerged to take the city probe to the next level.
But here may be the most important comparison of all. When it came to passing out business, the Ryan and Daley administrations shared a common philosophy.
Take care of your friends.