(WBBM NEWSRADIO) – Chicago U.S. Attorney John Lausch plans to leave the Justice Department “in early 2023” for the private sector, Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters Thursday.
Lausch has overseen major public corruption investigations in his five years in office. They culminated with criminal charges against former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan — and ultimately reshaped politics.
“We’ll provide an update in the coming days,” Joseph Fitzpatrick, Lausch’s spokesman, told the Chicago Sun-Times. “We expect John will be moving on by the end of February or early March.”
Garland revealed Lausch’s plans while making comments about the appointment of a special counsel to look into potentially classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center, where President Joe Biden kept an office after he left the vice presidency.
Lausch had been asked by Garland to review the documents, and Lausch recommended the appointment of a special counsel. But Garland said Lausch told him he “would be unable to accept any longer-term assignment because he would be leaving the Department [of Justice] in early 2023 for the private sector.”
Lausch will be leaving as some of the most significant of those public corruption cases head to trial. He appears on track to leave office before the March 6 trial of four individuals accused of trying to bribe Madigan.
His tenure will mostly be remembered for the aggressive probes of Illinois politics that went public under his watch, which targeted old-school Chicago-style graft.
But Lausch also spent the bulk of his term navigating a perilous position as the Justice Department’s man in Chicago during the Republican Trump administration that enjoyed little popularity here — a tricky balancing act in an intensely partisan era.
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Lausch’s success was likely due in part to his Joliet roots and the relationships he built in his past work as a federal prosecutor. Key among his former colleagues was Lori Lightfoot, who became mayor of Chicago while Lausch was in office but now faces a tough re-election fight.
Lausch has also enjoyed the support of U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, both Democrats who, in a 2021 letter to newly inaugurated President Joe Biden, successfully persuaded him to keep Lausch in the U.S. attorney’s role.
They said there is precedent for a U.S. attorney to remain “to conclude sensitive investigations.” They did not get more specific. But the news of Lausch’s departure comes three months after the filing of a superseding indictment that expanded the Madigan case.
The Lausch era also leaves Ald. Edward M. Burke under indictment for racketeering, accused of using the City of Chicago as a criminal “enterprise” in a document that added phrases to the local lexicon like, “did we land … the tuna?” Former Ald. Danny Solis was also exposed as a federal cooperator who turned on Burke after being confronted with his own alleged corruption.
Madigan left office in 2021 amid the feds’ investigation, and Burke has chosen not to seek re-election while facing trial. They were two of Chicago’s most significant politicians, whose careers were seemingly ended by the work of Lausch’s office.
Under Lausch, federal prosecutors in Chicago indicted and secured a conviction against R&B singer R. Kelly, who faces sentencing next month.
Fate also put Lausch in charge of the U.S. Attorney’s office during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to an unprecedented shutdown of Chicago’s federal court. Shortly after it began, prosecutors acknowledged trouble convening grand juries. They ultimately churned out several charges against politically connected individuals in 2020, as well as against ComEd.
The day ComEd was charged, Lausch held a press conference outside the Dirksen Federal Courthouse with officials from the FBI and IRS. Also joining him were the prosecutors assigned to handle the case in the courtroom.
Lausch acknowledged that day that, in his few public comments, he had previously characterized public corruption as a “very stubborn problem.”
“It continues to be a stubborn problem,” Lausch said that day. “But I feel very confident with the people that are working here … that we’re going to do whatever we can to try and whack away at that stubborn problem.”
(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire & Chicago Sun-Times 2023. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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