Alderman accused of driving around demanding money
Former http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2908 Alderman Michael McGee was a man constantly in need of cash who used his power to shake down business owners, at one point driving around his district brazenly demanding money at stores, according to a new document from federal prosecutors.
McGee’s need for cash only intensified as he faced a recall election, legal fights in civil court and a move into an apartment, according to the 51-page trial brief, which provides the most detailed account to date of the federal government’s case against the one-term alderman.
A previously released nine-count indictment, criminal complaint and search warrants concerning McGee and his activities provided basic allegations but many names and certain details were left out.
The new document also reveals allegations that McGee contacted a witness from jail, in what prosecutors say was an effort to coach her.
McGee, who was arrested on May 28, 2007, has been held without bail after prosecutors successfully argued he was intimidating witnesses from behind bars. McGee won the primary election from jail but was defeated in the general election.McGee is set to appear in federal court this morning for a final pretrial hearing on charges that he tried to shake down business owners in his district. Jury selection in the trial is scheduled to begin Wednesday, and the trial opens June 16. The trial is expected to last at least two weeks.
McGee also is charged in state court with making threats, vote-buying and other crimes. His state trial was abruptly stopped last month after newly translated wiretap conversations in Arabic surfaced that a state prosecutor said could allow McGee to argue he was entrapped. A new date for the state trial has not been set.
The prosecutor’s brief is the only new document of any substance in the case that has not been closed to the public. At least 10 recently filed motions have been sealed by U.S. District Judge Charles Clevert. The government argued sealing was necessary to keep certain facts from prospective jurors.
Clevert has held several closed-door meetings with lawyers in the case, totaling more than six hours. The Journal Sentinel protested the meetings, but Clevert rejected access, saying only procedural matters would be discussed. McGee’s attorney, Calvin Malone, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Wall, lead prosecutor and author of the brief, declined to comment on it.
From the document, a picture of emerges of an alderman who used his district’s businesses as piggy banks that he tapped whenever he needed money.
“McGee always needed cash,” according to the government’s key witness, identified in documents as “Jack Adel.” His legal name is Adel “Jack” Kheirieh, according to documents filed when he ran unsuccessfully for McGee’s seat this year. Kheirieh is the owner of Mother’s Foods, on N. 16th St., the alleged hub of McGee’s vote-buying activity during his 2007 recall election.
Kheirieh’s credibility is expected to come under fire during the trial, the brief says.
Kheirieh, who had known McGee for years and later secretly recorded their conversations, told FBI agents the alderman often demanded pre-paid cell phones and free food and drink. In December, McGee filed an ethics report, saying he had received the free phones from Kheirieh in 2006.
McGee wielded considerable power as an alderman, the prosecutor’s document says, but his power increased when he was named to the Licenses Committee early last year, by which time federal authorities were already tapping McGee’s phone under a federal judge’s order.
“The move (onto Licenses) was anticipated for some time and was viewed by Mr. McGee and others as an opportunity to bring pressure to bear upon area business owners,” the document says.
Dennis Walton, a close associate of McGee’s, was the alderman’s “bag man” because he collected money for McGee, the document says. Walton is heard on an intercepted call telling McGee that the alderman was “about to be God for a whole lot of (expletive).” Walton, who helped to run McGee’s Rapid Response Team, also talked about forming an “ass-kicking committee.”
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=759272
From a reader: Violence, threats, intimidation and other criminal behavior is http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3210, also had an ongoing economic criminal enterprise. Both Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have been accused of running their outfits as glorified “shakedown” operations. Similar examples are endless. So it comes as no surprise to see Michael McGee, a hard core black supremacist, facing these charges.
But there may also be an element of federal “payback” involved. In 1987, McGee called for “disruption of white events” if the city did not give blacks jobs. A black nationalist since his days in the original Black Panthers, McGee later announced that he was forming a Black Panther Militia, complete with guns to “protect” blacks from city officials. McGee’s Black Panther Militia eventually led to the New Black Panther Party, which was helmed for a while until his death by Khalid Abdul Muhammad, who openly called for the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3347. (Muhammad was so extreme that he was expelled from the Nation of Islam).
The feds have used the courts to harass and even shut down black nationalists before, from http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4376, more of a buffoon that a revolutionary, is now under the microscope of the IRS for alleged tax evasion, the old Al Capone ploy. The state cracks down on some black nationalists because these leaders disrupt the government’s commitment to a long range goal of eventual racial integration. As Barack Obama has found, the wild talk of black nationalist extremists merely underscores the fact of the unbridgeable racial divide in America, showing that it persists despite decades of forced integration, affirmative action and other expensive, harmful and ineffective programs. By threatening the ruling caste with violence and open insurrection and flouting the rules of officially sanctioned racial discourse, Michael McGee may have made enemies who are unwilling to forget.