Chicago – Federal prosecutors say a newly discovered witness admits that on orders from Mayor Richard M. Daley’s former patronage chief, he deleted a computer index suspected of containing politically sensitive hiring records.
The witness, an unnamed city computer operator, claims that patronage chief Robert Sorich and another man joked about throwing a hard drive into Lake Michigan, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Prosecutors portrayed the alleged incident as an example of how Sorich and other city officials sought to thwart attempts by federal agents to investigate illegal patronage hiring, in which city jobs are doled out to political campaign workers.
The story was outlined in court papers filed Tuesday by the government with U.S. District Judge David H. Coar, who is to preside over the trial of Sorich and three other men charged with using fraud to disguise that a court order against patronage hiring was being violated. Jury selection is scheduled to next week.
Prosecutors already had said that Sorich ordered his secretary to shred copies of patronage records and that a “computer liaison” was ordered to delete the electronic versions.
