Beavers: Former U.S. Attorney a ‘rooster with no nuts’
BY LISA DONOVAN Cook County Reporter ldonovan@suntimes.com July 5, 2012 10:55AM
Cook County Commissioner William Beavers provide proof to refute claims of federal prosecutors with his Attorney Sam Adams Jr., at Henderson Adam, LLC, 330 S. Wells Street, Thursday, July 5, 2012. | John H. White~Sun-Times
Updated: July 6, 2012 2:29AM
He famously called himself the “hog with the big nuts,” but Cook County Commissioner William Beavers says the former federal prosecutor who pushed to indict him on tax-evasion charges is the “rooster with no nuts.”
At a Thursday press conference to once again respond to the charges, Beavers accused federal authorities of “lying, lying, lying” and questioned the manliness of former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who just stepped down from the job after more than a decade at the post.
“He’s a rooster without nuts, a capon. OK? That’s what he is, a capon,” the 77-year-old Beavers said at his attorney’s law offices Thursday in the Loop. A capon is a castrated male chicken.
Beavers has blasted Fitzgerald since a federal grand jury indicted him in February on tax-evasion charges. The former Chicago cop and city alderman has maintained his innocence, telling the Sun-Times this year “F--- him,” and that he’s not scared of Fitzgerald — who put two Illinois governors in prison. On Thursday, Beavers showed no signs that he’s backing off.
“You know for three years, Fitzgerald [has] been hounding me. I’m gonna try to hound him for the next six months, OK?” he said, a reference to run-up to his December trial date.
Beavers and his attorneys also offered a peek at how they’ll defend the case against charges he diverted money from a campaign fund to his pension to boost his monthly payments.
In 2006, Beavers wrote a check for $68,763.07 from one of his campaign funds to the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago, boosting his monthly pension by $2,890, to $6,541, according to the indictment announced in February.
He shared bank documents Thursday showing $68,000 was deposited into the “Citizens for Beavers” account at Park National Bank in May 2009. The repayment, his attorney Sam Adam Jr. explained, shows he didn’t need to pay income taxes on the money since it was a loan.
Beavers added: “The document shows the $68,000 that I took out of my campaign fund was paid back in 2009. And they [federal authorities] claim that they didn’t know anything about it. Well, all they had to do was ask me. I could have told them and showed them and showed them . . . that $68,000 was paid.”
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined comment.
The nearly $70,000 is just a portion of the more than $226,000 federal prosecutors say Beavers took from campaign funds and his county expense account to go gambling as well as pump up his city pension.
Attorneys say they weren’t going to lay out every detail of their defense, but Beavers and his defense team already have said he had canceled checks, tax forms and amended tax forms and other paperwork showing the money served as loans that have been repaid or income on which he paid taxes.
He and his attorneys say this case is retribution for what Beavers said was his refusal to wear a wire at the request of FBI agents to record conversations with Commissioner John Daley, former mayor Richard M. Daley’s brother. Beavers said that sometime in 2009, two FBI agents came to his South Shore residence and made the request.
“When they walked up to me and said, ‘We want you to wear a wire against John Daley,’ that was an insult to me. And I told them, ‘I’m 75 years old. I’m too old to be a stool pigeon.’ And when I get ready to confess, I’ll go to church.”
He said the indictment was payback because “I told them in so many words to kiss where the sun don’t shine.”
Beavers said there’s a certain irony to how this is all unfolding.
“It’s against the law to lie to the FBI,” Beavers said. “But it’s not against the law for them to lie on you — and that’s what they’ve been doing all the time: lying, lying, lying.”
He also said, “I’m not a criminal, I haven’t stolen a dime. I had some thieves following me the last three years that couldn’t find nothing. All right? And the thieves were the FBI.”
