Aide's Lies Thwarted Dorothy Brown Bribery Probe: Prosecutors

CHICAGO — Federal prosecutors argued their ability to charge Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown with accepting a bribe from a Glenview man was thwarted by lies one of her top aides told a federal grand jury, according to a court filing unsealed Wednesday.

False testimony from convicted clerk's office employees Beena Patel and Sivasubramani Rajaram "prevented the FBI from moving forward with their investigation of Dorothy Brown," FBI Special Agent Mary Harris said, according to a portion of Patel's pre-sentence report cited by her attorney.

Rajaram, 52, of Glenview, pleaded guilty to buying a job in the clerk's office by offering a phony loan to Goat Masters Corporation, a company owned by Brown and her spouse.

Patel, 58, of Chicago, a former deputy clerk responsible for supervising hundreds of employees in the clerk's office, is due to be sentenced Dec. 12 after a jury in April found her guilty of three counts of perjury for lying to a grand jury.

The unsealed 18-page filing (below) from Donald Angelini Jr., Patel's defense attorney, requests a sentence of three years probation and a $10,000 fine. It argues that prosecutors have not established that Patel's lies directly led to the to the government's inability and to indict or convict Brown.

"Again, Beena Patel is not minimizing her lies or the significance of the lies," it said, "she is merely questioning the causal effect of whether those lies substantially made it more difficult for the Government to indict Dorothy Brown, especially in light of the fact that Rajaram seemed to be more than willing to offer damaging testimony against Dorothy regarding his own payments to Brown."

Earlier this month, prosecutors requested a prison sentence of two and a half years for Patel. Patel was "not only aware of the bribe payment, she had herself brokered it," Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather McShain said in the government's sentencing memo.

[I]n August 2014 Sivasubramani Rajaram gave $15,000 to Goat Masters, a business owned by the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County and her husband. In exchange, Rajaram was rehired at the Clerk’s Office. Defendant herself orchestrated this bribe, and then lied about it. Defendant was an active participant in Cook County’s seminal problem of 'pay-to-play' corruption, and she took active measures to cover up that corruption when she lied. Yet even now, after a jury convicted defendant on all three counts of the indictment, defendant still refuses to accept responsibility for her actions. Despite sitting through her own trial, defendant preposterously states in her version of the offense that she "is without information as to what effect ... her false statements had on the grand jury’s ability to understand the dynamic of what was going on, and to what extent her false testimony prevented the government from proceeding with prosecutions.' As a result of defendant’s crimes, and her continued unwillingness to accept responsibility for those crimes, the government seeks a within-guidelines sentence of 30 months' imprisonment.

Prosecutors argued Patel was an active participant in corruption and took "active measures to cover up that corruption. [Patel] participated in serious crimes, and her actions have been calculated and deliberate."

Sentencing her to below federal guidelines "would not promote respect for the law; rather, it would merely breed contempt for it, by suggesting that people who choose to ignore the law and lie under oath in public corruption investigations can simply get away with their crimes without facing any substantial punishment."

Related:
Dorothy Brown Decides Not To Run For Re-Election To 5th Term
$10,000 Buys A Job In Clerk Dorothy Brown's Office: Court Filing
Debt Collector Charged With Bribing Dorothy Brown's Office For Business
Ex-Cook County Clerk Employee Sentenced For Lying To Feds

Patel's attorney, Angelini, said she would suffer whether or not she was sentenced to prison, as she had already lost her $7,287-a-month pension payments, which would have amounted to more than $2 million over her natural lifetime. Since her retirement, she has taken a job at an after-school learning center in Buffalo Grove. The defense attorney said Patel is "fearful ... that her sentencing hearing ... could turn into a comment on public corruption."

Angelini had initially been permitted filed the defense sentencing memo under seal after claiming it included "sensitive and personal information," according to the Chicago Tribune. But Karen Flax, deputy general counsel for Tribune Publishing, sent a letter to U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis arguing that the judge was not in compliance with constitutional and common law requirements when she allowed the entire memo to be kept secret. At a hearing Tuesday, Ellis reversed course and called for a redacted version of the sentencing memo to be filed publicly.

Brown, who announced publicly in August she would not seek a fifth term as clerk of the circuit court, has been the subject of a federal corruption investigation for more than six years. She launched a campaign for Chicago mayor last year but was kept off the ballot after her Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle challenged the signatures on her nominating petitions. Her attorney, Vadim Glozman, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the case against Patel is "completely separate" and "has nothing to do with Ms. Brown."

In addition to allegations of corruption and job-buying, Brown's office has faced years of criticism for its attempts at updating Cook County's paper-based court records system.

The self-described "operations efficiency expert" has presided over an office that was ordered by a federal judge to implement electronic filing and recently implemented a third layer of electronic case management systems for criminal court records, leading to heavy delays and derision from users. People charged with crimes in Cook County remain unable to check online when their next court appearance has been scheduled, increasing the likelihood of further arrests when judges issue warrants for failure to appear in court.