Cover-Up of Chicago Police Shooting Goes to the Top
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s fingerprints are all over it.
Remember: This is the company that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton keep. According a record of emails between Rahm Emanuel and his lawyers, the Chicago mayor knew about the dashcam footage of a Chicago police killing Laquan McDonald — possibly seeing the footage himself — and then ordered his lawyers to bury the video with a $5 million settlement. Originally, Emanuel said that he hadn’t seen the footage, that it was the lawyer for the McDonald estate who approached the city wanting to settle. But The Daily Beast dug into the email record and showed that the city initially rejected the offer. Then Emanuel’s lawyers talked with the mayor. And the tune changed. The lawyer for McDonald first protested that the settlement included a provision that kept the video under wraps until the investigation into the death was concluded, but then Emanuel’s lawyers gave him a call. Then, in the middle of Emanuel’s re-election run, the Chicago City Council deliberated for all of 36 seconds and approved the $5 million settlement. The video was buried until 15 months after Emanuel was safely re-elected.
Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey wrote, “Right now, Chicagoans can do little about it until the next election. Perhaps if the Illinois state legislature passes the bill allowing for recall elections, that might change. Or, perhaps Emanuel will do the ethical thing and resign. So far, though, there seems to be little evidence of ethics in Emanuel’s track record as mayor.”
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