Portage mayor asks judge to dismiss federal corruption charges
Post-Tribune
April 10, 2018
http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-snyder-corruption-motion-dismissal-st-0411-story.html
Indicted Portage Mayor James Snyder has asked a federal judge to dismiss his corruption case, according to court documents.
Snyder’s attorney, Jackie Bennett Jr., filed a motion Monday to dismiss the charges saying that federal prosecutors had access to privileged communications between the mayor and his defense attorneys despite a screening process by investigators that reportedly weeded out those emails, according to court documents.
“More recent court-compelled discovery productions have only confirmed Snyder’s suspicion that ‘the government’s left hand had no idea what its right hand was doing,’” Bennett said in the motion. “Most notably, communications that were deemed by the government’s taint team to be privileged – and thereafter supposedly ‘quarantined’ from the trial team – are among the documents it now admits it has freely accessed and used for two years.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office does not comment on pending cases.
During the discovery process for Snyder’s trial, Bennett said it was found that documents reviewed by the prosecutors contained confidential attorney-client material, according to court documents. Bennett said federal investigators used a “taint team” to review the email communication seized, according to court documents, but that review failed to shield all privileged communications from the trial team.
Bennett said when the defense received the emails quarantined by federal investigators for being privileged, several of those were also found in possession of the trial team.
“It is now beyond dispute, the government’s trial team has admitted it viewed communications that the taint team had previously deemed confidential,” Bennett wrote. “Worse, the subject matter of those privileged communication relates directly to core allegations charged in the indictment.”
The motion to dismiss centers on issues related to emails screened by the federal trial team that contained privileged information, but Judge Joseph Van Bokkelen has not yet ruled on whether new prosecutors should handle the case.
The emails looked routine, Van Bokkelen said during a March hearing, and none of the documents that went through the screening appeared privileged.
“There’s no smoking guns,” Van Bokkelen said.
The allegations against the prosecutors say email communications between Snyder, defense attorney Thomas Dogan, and Thomas Kirsch II, who was then the mayor’s defense attorney before being appointed as U.S. attorney, were seized in 2015, according to court documents.
Kirsch has recused himself from Snyder’s case, according to court documents, and U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois would oversee and manage local prosecutors handling the case.
Snyder and John Cortina, of Kustom Auto Body in Portage, were charged in November 2016 with allegedly violating a federal bribery statue. Federal prosecutors said the mayor allegedly solicited money from Cortina and “Individual A” and gave them a towing contract for Portage.
Snyder received an additional bribery indictment for allegedly accepting $13,000 in connection with a Board of Works contract, and allegedly obstructing Internal Revenue Service laws.
Snyder and Cortina both pleaded not guilty to the charges last year, according to court documents.
The trial for Snyder and Cortina is tentatively set to start in June, according to court documents.
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