Judge tosses bribery counts in case related to former Clerk Brown

In a rare setback for the U.S. attorney’s office in a public corruption case, a federal judge on Friday dismissed several bribery charges against the owner of a Pennsylvania debt-collection business accused of steering money to thenCook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown’s campaign in exchange for government business.

U.S. District Judge John Lee’s ruling in the case against Donald Donagher Jr. is being closely watched among Chicago’s legal community as Donagher’s attorneys have alleged that prosecutors overstepped the language of the federal bribery statute in bringing the indictment.

Lee said during a hearing Friday that prosecutors failed to allege an “explicit” quid pro quo in the charges alleging Donagher’s campaign contributions to Brown were actually bribes.

The judge dismissed the three bribery counts in the indictment dealing directly with campaign contributions, as well as elements of the overarching conspiracy count that alleged the same conduct.

Lee left the door open for prosecutors to recharge the offenses if they offer new evidence.

Left intact were other counts alleging Donagher paid into the clerk’s scholarship and community development fund, directed employees to make robocalls for Brown’s campaign, and underwrote Brown’s 2014 Women’s History Month celebration in an effort to curry favor with her office.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ankur Srivastava asked the judge Friday for time to discuss the ruling with his bosses “so we can decide how to proceed.”

Donagher, chief executive officer of the Penn

Credit Corp., was accused in the indictment filed in 2019 of sending an email in 2011 to his employees and a company lobbyist in Illinois indicating he had promised Brown “10K of ‘early’ money” in exchange for a lucrative contract with the county.

The next month, he donated $10,000 to her campaign fund, prosecutors said.

Brown, however, was never charged in the case. Donagher’s attorneys have criticized the government for accusing someone of paying bribes without indicting the elected official who allegedly took them.

Donagher’s lawyer, Theodore Poulos, said in a court filing last year that if prosecutors could have proven a quid pro quo existed, then Brown surely would have been charged.

“The fact that she has not been charged is sufficient, in and of itself, to conclude what the defense and the government plainly know: the government cannot establish a quid pro quo,” Poulos wrote.

By moving forward with the case, Poulos said prosecutors had stretched the bounds” of the bribery statute beyond the breaking point with a “dangerous and overzealous interpretation of the law.

In addition to the Donagher case, Brown, who left office last year after 20 years at the helm of the county’s sprawling court clerk system, was the focus of a lengthy federal corruption probe centered on bribesfor-jobs allegations in her office.

Two of her underlings were later convicted of lying to a federal grand jury investigating the allegations, but Brown herself was never charged as part of that investigation either.

A man and woman were in custody Saturday after allegedly hijacking at least two vehicles — including one occupied by sisters who are retired police officers — before holing up in a Villa Park motel, where one of the suspects refused to surrender to SWAT officers for several hours, Chicago police said.

The more than 12-hourlong series of incidents began shortly after noon Friday in the Humboldt Park neighborhood and ended about 1:40 a.m. Saturday at a Motel 6 at 10 W. Roosevelt Road in the western suburb, police said.

Around 12:50 p.m. in the 3700 block of West Chicago Avenue, the suspects, a 26year-old Logan Square woman and a 25-year-old East Garfield Park man, confronted a motorist driving a 2010 Nissan Maxima, announced a robbery and demanded the vehicle, police said.

One of the suspects fired a shot at the victim, who was not injured. The suspects drove off in the car

A little more than three hours later, the Maxima collided with another car in the 7100 block of West Bryn Mawr Avenue in the Old Norwood Park neighborhood, police said.

A retired Cook County sheriff’s sergeant who was behind the wheel of a 2019 Hyundai Tucson nearby saw the crash and began backing away, when suddenly the two people inside the Maxima jumped out.

The male suspect pointed a gun at the retired sergeant and her passenger, who is her sister and a retired Chicago police officer, police said.

The suspects demanded the Tucson and the sisters got out, while the man and women sped north on

Harlem Avenue, police said.

Later Friday, a vehicle linked to the suspects was located parked outside the Villa Park Motel 6, police said. Police set up surveillance, and the woman was taken into custody at 7:30 p.m.

But the man remained in a room and began making “dangerous threats,” bringing the DuPage County SWAT team and Villa Park police to the scene, police said.

Several hours later, at 1:40 a.m. Saturday, the man was arrested without incident.

Villa Park police said a “large amount of cannabis” and two guns were found in the room.

A woman who answered at the front desk of the motel said she wasn’t authorized to say anything.

Both suspects were taken to Area 4 police headquarters on the West Side, but no charges have been announced.