Clash at the courts
The art of Dart . . .
Tit for tat! It’s chuckles & knuckles time at the Leighton Criminal Courts Building, where the latest dustup between Cook County Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is now at hand.
The buckshot: Dart’s dander rose recently after Evans, who banned cellphones in the courtrooms, blasted Dart’s courthouse security for not tackling the electronic device misuse.
The slapshot: The new dustup erupted this week when Dart upped security measures at the judges’ secure parking lot behind the criminal courts building and near the Cook County Jail.
The trunkshot: Dart is now requiring judges and elected officials to open their car trunks and provide a photo ID when entering and exiting the parking lot! (Just in case a criminal chooses such an egress?)
The upshot: “The grumbling judges are interpreting this move as Dart’s way of giving it back to Evans for the cellphone feud,” said a top Sneed source.
Divot data . . .
Voila! Among the more than $40,000 worth of gifts given to the Obama family in 2011 by former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla BruniSarkozy, is a $7800 Hermes golf bag for the president.
Fly ’em . . .
Sneed’s “think you oughtta know” department: On a recent airplane trip to Washington, D.C., from Chicago, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was riding in coach class — while Mayor Rahm Emanuel was enjoying first class.
Rahm ’em . . .
Film director Michael “Transformers” Bay, who will film the fourth installment of the explosive action series in Chicago this summer, had words with Eman- uel recently. Bay filmed the third film in the series in 2010, when Mayor Richard Daley was still in office.
Bay, a client of Rahm’s brother/ uber-agent Ari Emanuel, reportedly told hizzoner he talked to Ari recently, who said: “My brother is an a - - - - - -, but he won’t be an a - - - - - - to you.”
Rahm’s response: “Anything [Mayor] Daley did, I’ll do better.”
The Daley race . . .
Click. Click. Click. It won’t just be former Mayor Richard M. Daley participating in the Susan G. Komen Chicagoland Mother’s Day Race for the Cure on May 12 in Grant Park in honor of his late wife, Maggie, whose life was claimed by cancer.
Photo ops: Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Bill Daley tells Sneed “the entire Daley clan will be in the race. Everyone.”
Hair scare . . .
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Trump em: Real estate mogul Donald Trump, who sports a comb-over from hell, is expected to hit Chicago this month to testify at a federal trial stemming from a dispute over the sale of two units at his Trump Tower.
Divorce ’em . . .
It read like a case of criminal chutzpah, but retired multimillionaire CBOE trader Steve Fanady, who was charged with forging a divorce judgment decree in order to get a religious annulment, just saw his case dismissed!
Backshot: Fanady, who was arrested for allegedly forging the stamp of a Cook County judge and the signature of an attorney on a divorce judgment decree so he could obtain a religious annulment to marry his second wife, had a divorce file that read like a twisted Greek tragedy. Fanady credits the outcome “to the support of my wife, Gina” and his attorney, Joel Brodsky, who represented convicted wife murderer Drew Peterson. There ya go.