Let’s Dial Dack the Time Machine and Remember What Really Happened in the Case of US v. LaShawn Ford that ‘Poof!’ Disappeared

By Carol Marin

Campaign ads can be ugly. In the 7th Congressional District, the one by Super PAC Fairshake, funded by the cryptocurrency industry, against State Representative LaShawn Ford certainly is. The pro-crypto group launched a political ad against Ford regarding charges brought — and later dropped — by federal prosecutors. So, let’s dial back the Time Machine and remember what really happened as chronicled in my Chicago Sun-Times column in the summer of 2014:

“LaShawn Ford and Questions of Selective Prosecution

It virtually never happens. Yet it just did.

Federal prosecutors dropped 17 felony counts of bank fraud and false information against Illinois state Rep. LaShawn Ford (D) of Chicago in exchange for one misdemeanor income tax charge.

Let that sink in.

The Chicago lawmaker faced many years in prison. Each charge carried a 30-year maximum sentence. Multiply 17×30 and gauge the seriousness for yourself. After two years of enduring a living hell, poof!, the felonies are gone?

Shall we talk about selective prosecution? Whether the FBI and prosecutors went after Ford but no one else for the same alleged crime?

The original charge: improperly extending and using his $1.5Million dollar line of credit in his struggling real estate business and some of the money going to pay personal debts.

Amazingly, not a single banker nor any other customer—a number of them, white—were charged, even though many defaults were greater than Ford’s.

What set him apart is that he is an elected official even though the charges were in no way connected to his public office.

Ford, 42, represents Chicago’s Austin neighborhood. It is predominantly black and largely impoverished. Elected in 2006, he went against the regular Democrats who endorsed the chronically troubled incumbent hack Calvin Giles. After three tries and with the personal investment of $134,000, Ford, a real estate broker who rehabbed property, finally won.

The Machine was stunned.

Life has always been against the odds for LaShawn Ford. The son of a drug addicted mother, he was raised by his grandmother and sent to Catholic schools and on to seminary.

But ultimately, his path took him to teaching and business. And, finally, to politics.

At his arraignment the lobby of the Dirksen Federal Building filled with supporters from his neighborhood. Unlike the indictment of fellow state representative Derrick Smith on bribery charges, there was an outpouring in behalf of Ford that is seldom seen in the granite courthouse.

But newly appointed US Attorney Zachary Fardon was firm in a recent WTTW Chicago Tonight interview that the prosecution was neither selective nor unwarranted.

“The answer to your question is no,” he told me. “We set the bar high in terms of what we require before we pull the trigger on an indictment….In terms of the integrity of that process I have no compunction and no concern.”

Ford’s attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin, argued otherwise in a strongly worded brief:

” Unable to find any political corruption grounds to prosecute Defendant, the prosecutors selected this misguided and improper bank fraud case in an attempt to unseat a popular African American elected representative.”

On Monday, after the felonies were dropped, Durkin was diplomatic, throwing bouquets rather than bricks at U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon’s office for doing what was “right and courageous.”

We all make mistakes.

Including the feds.

They just never can say they’re sorry.”

So, their press release began with the headline: “STATE REP. LASHAWN FORD PLEADS GUILTY TO MISDEMEANOR TAX OFFENSE.”

It should have read, “FEDERAL PROSECUTORS DROPPED A WRONGHEADED FELONY CASE SO AS NOT TO RUIN A GOOD MAN’S LIFE.”