As the high-profile trial of the very chatty ex-Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich gets underway in Chicago, some can’t help but think what this case means to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, a star prosecutor who has publicly vilified the former politician.
The Chicago News Cooperative writes in the New York Times that ultimately a loss “would be a black eye for Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney who brought the case against him.”
“For more than three decades, the United States Attorney’s Office in Chicago has made its reputation successfully prosecuting public servants,” the paper wrote. “It has sent to prison Cook County judges, scores of Chicago aldermen and other City Hall officials, as well as former Gov. George Ryan. But in terms of pure news media spectacle and national profile, the Blagojevich trial may be the biggest test yet for an office with a storied legacy.”
“The hobby of the office has been public corruption,” Scott Lassar, the United States attorney whom Mr. Fitzgerald succeeded in 2001, told the paper.
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