Progressive Lies: CTU Leadership chose a Felon over Mah
Everybody does know that the Chicago Teachers Union supported Alex Acevedo over Theresa Mah when she first ran for office.
Instead of supporting a trailblazing Asian American into the State Assembly, the Chicago Teachers Union at the time supported the crony kid Alex Acevedo under the directions of Jackson Potter, Stacy Davis Gates, and Rebecca Martinez.
They chose Alex Acevedo over Theresa Mah due to him being a Latino man.
The same Acevedo whose dad was convicted for public corruption; State Rep. Eddie Acevedo Gets 6 Months in Prison in Case Tied to Madigan Probe.
Seems like Father and son are both in the public corruption business.
Both chosen as standard bearers for the progressive movement of the Chicago Teaches Union leadership.
It should be noted here that Karen Lewis was sick at this time and there's multiple reports of Stacy and Jackson pestering Karen on her deathbed and during treatment to ok these bad decisions.
Internally at the union there were warnings not to use race politics in Pilsen, and other working class neighborhoods. The leadership refused to listen to staffers who lived in racially polarized areas of the city.
Stacy used a sneak move for endorsements and financial support of Acevedo. She did a workaround through the Illinois Federation of Teachers which endorsed Acevedo over Theresa Mah. Something unheard of, where the State union gets involved in Chicago politics. Worked well to cover up this backdoor endorsement.
Internal union sources in Westmont were clear, this was not a normal practice and was ordered by the Chicago local leadership.
Instead of doing what's right and supporting a progressive Asian woman candidate for office Stacy and Jackson picked a convicted public felon over a progressive Asian.
Just wait until the Madigan trial continues. The Chicago Teachers is already entangled in that mess in the Alaina Hampton case where Stacy Davis Gates was directly involved with pay to play revenge politics in dealings with Mike Madigan's office.
Don't think those people are, who you think, they are.
The current leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union are the worst enemy to the working class in this city since the times of the Pinkertons.
---------
Jury finds son of former state Rep. Edward Acevedo guilty of tax evasion charges with ties to ComEd bribery probe
By Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune
Jan 30, 2023 at 5:15 pm
The son of former state Rep. Edward Acevedo was found guilty by a federal jury Monday of tax evasion charges that were an offshoot of the investigation into Commonwealth Edison’s alleged attempts to influence then-House Speaker Michael Madigan.
After a quick, three-day trial, the jury deliberated only about 45 minutes before finding Alex Acevedo guilty on two counts of willfully filing false tax returns that underreported his lobbying income by about $70,000 in 2016 and 2018, resulting in a total tax loss of about $20,000.
Seated at the defense table wearing a mask, Acevedo, 37, showed no outward reaction to the verdict. After the jury left, he embraced his wife and cried, while their 7-year-old daughter, who’d attended most of the trial, hugged him around the waist.
Acevedo faces up to three years in prison on each count when he’s sentenced in July.
His attorney, Ricardo Meza, had no comment after court.
Though relatively minor in scope, the indictment against Acevedo, along with separate charges filed against his younger brother and their father, received widespread attention due to the connection to the ComEd probe.
Meza repeatedly alleged in court filings that it was clear investigators were after Madigan, not his client. During a proffer meeting between Alex Acevedo and prosecutors in February 2020, at least 75% of the questions asked by the government “pertained to Mr. Madigan and his associates,” Meza wrote in one motion last year.
“However, when (Alex) Acevedo’s truthful responses did not seem to align with what the government sought to hear, the IRS agent pivoted and began asking Mr. Acevedo questions about his 2016 and 2018 tax returns,” Meza wrote.
But none of that came out during Acevedo’s trial, where the only real question was whether there was proof that he intentionally left income off his tax returns.
According to the charges, Acevedo, a registered nurse who previously made failed election bids for Chicago alderman, failed to report earnings from Apex Strategy LLC, a lobbying and consulting firm formed by his brother, Michael, in 2015, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors alleged Alex Acevedo did most of the work on several of Apex Strategy’s contracts, including one with the Associated Beer Distributors of Illinois trade association and another with a Washington-based consulting firm working with AT&T.
But all of Acevedo’s income was off the books, with no W-2 form issued and no other paperwork reporting it to the IRS, prosecutors alleged.
“Apex was a virtual black box,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Chapman said in his opening statement Thursday.
Chapman said that as a lobbyist and son of a longtime state lawmaker, Alex was sophisticated enough to know that he had to report the money but failed to do so out of greed.
“To work in the world of lobbying in consulting down in Springfield, where you’re trying to advance or defeat legislation, you have to be detail oriented,” Chapman told the jury in his closing argument Monday.
Meza, however, however, said the case was really just about a “common man” who was doing his best under the circumstances — not about politics or greed or his father. Meza said Acevedo was simply waiting for the paperwork from his brother and was under pressure to file his returns on time and made a mistake.
“Alex should not be in this courtroom,” Meza said in his closing argument. “He made an error. He made a pretty bad error. He did his own taxes.”
In rebuttal, Chapman called the idea “farcical,” noting that all of Acevedo’s alleged “mistakes” seemed to help line his pockets.
Edward Acevedo, 59, pleaded guilty to skirting about $37,000 in taxes by misreporting lobbying income he’d received over three years. He was sentenced in March 2022 to six months in prison and was released in December, records show.
Michael Acevedo, 36, pleaded guilty last month to failing to file tax returns documenting five years of revenues for Apex Strategy. He’s scheduled to be sentenced on March 15.
ComEd agreed in 2020 to pay a record $200 million fine as prosecutors unveiled a criminal complaint charging the company with a yearslong bribery scheme involving jobs, contracts and payments to Madigan allies. Under the terms of a deferred prosecution agreement with the government, the charges against the utility giant will be dropped if the company continues to cooperate.
In November 2020, Madigan’s longtime confidant Michael McClain and three others were charged. They’re scheduled to go on trial March 6.
Meanwhile, last year AT&T Illinois and the phone giant’s former president, Paul La Schiazza, were charged in a similar scheme to funnel payments to Edward Acevedo in exchange for the speaker’s help passing legislation important to the company.
La Schiazza, 65, has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy, federal program bribery, and using a facility in interstate commerce to promote unlawful activity.
AT&T Illinois has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office, admitting its role in the scheme and agreeing to pay $23 million and cooperate in the investigation. In exchange, prosecutors will drop criminal charges filed against the company in two years.
Madigan and McClain were both charged in a separate indictment in March 2022 with racketeering conspiracy alleging they participated in a range of corrupt schemes, including the ComEd and AT&T Illinois bribery.
The scandal helped end Madigan’s reign as the nation’s longest-serving speaker in January 2021. Madigan later resigned from the Illinois House and as Illinois Democratic Party chairman.
In April 2017, La Schiazza approved a deal to secretly funnel $2,500 a month to Edward Acevedo through a lobbying company already doing business with AT&T Illinois, according to the statement. The lobbying company was not named in the court filings.
At McClain’s direction, AT&T employees then met with Edward Acevedo to discuss a “pretextual” reason for the payments: to “prepare a report on the political dynamics of the General Assembly’s and Chicago City Council’s Latino Caucuses,” according to the statement of facts.
Edward Acevedo never did any real work for AT&T Illinois, however. In fact, according to AT&T’s admissions in court, he balked at first at the payments, saying they were too low. But he agreed to the deal after McClain stepped in and said the amount was “sufficient.”
Advertisement
From June 2017 to January 2018, Edward Acevedo was paid a total of $22,500 in monthly installments. According to AT&T’s admission, the former representative “did not complete the purported assignment” on Latino politics, and “no efforts were undertaken” by AT&T to ensure work was being done in exchange for the money.
---------
Former State Rep. Eddie Acevedo Gets 6 Months in Prison in Case Tied to Madigan Probe
Acevedo pleaded guilty to tax evasion in December
Published March 23, 2022
Updated on March 23, 2022 at 3:55 pm
A federal judge sentenced former state Rep. Edward "Eddie" Acevedo on Wednesday to six months in prison for cheating on his taxes in a prosecution that resulted from the same investigation that led to the indictment of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Before he announced the sentence, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly said "there’s a particular responsibility" of people who make laws and enforce laws "to comply with those laws," the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
"And Mr. Acevedo didn’t do that," Kennelly said.
Acevedo, 58, pleaded guilty to tax evasion in December, admitting he failed as a self-employed consultant to keep sufficient accounting records and shorted the government by $37,000 in taxes for 2015, 2017 and 2018. He must pay that amount in restitution, the judge said.
Acevedo is also a former police officer. Before he was sentenced, Acevedo told the judge, "I deeply regret my actions." He said this was "not the way I brought my boys up to be. … They expected better from me, and I let them down."
Acevedo’s sentencing is the latest in a series of notable public corruption moments in recent weeks.
----------
Madigan goes down. Teacher union collaboration isn't part of the indictment nor was attempted pension theft.
Fred Klonsky @ fredklonsky.substack.com
March 3, 2022
Praise must be given to political consultant Alaina Hampton who started the ball rolling when she exposed, at great personal risk, the sexual toxicity of the Speaker’s office.
Formally, the feds indicted him on charges related to corruption and ComEd.
There is no mention of pension theft in the indictment and I wouldn’t expect there to be.
There is no mention of the co-conspirators in the attempted stealing of pubic employee pensions. Those would be the leaders of the teachers’ unions.
Yet I want to make a special point of expressing how I feel about the role of my state union, the Illinois Education Association, and the Illinois Federation of Teachers and their Chicago affiliate, the Chicago Teachers Union, whose leaders have all been way too cozy with Madigan, the guy who engineered attempts at pension theft and so-called school reform designed by Stand for Children.
I broke that story, posting the Aspen Institute video (you can find it on Youtube) where Jonah Edelman of Stand for Children boasts how he got the IFT, CTU and the IEA to go along with Madigan's bill that took away bargaining rights and instituted teacher testing that teachers still live with to this day.
The Political Action Committees and dues dollars from the IEA, the IFT and the CTU filled Madigan's personal campaign fund, The Friends of Michael Madigan.
In fact, he used teacher PAC money to hire the lawyers and pay the settlement in the case of Alaina Hampton.
Hundreds of thousands of teacher PAC and membership dollars that we donated thinking it was to help elect pro-education candidates.
Only when it was clear that the suit against Madigan's pension theft was headed for the Illinois Supreme Court, did the IFT and the IEA join in. It was the Illinois Retired Teachers Association, with far less resources, that hired the lawyer who made the argument before the court facing down Lisa Madigan, the state AG and daughter of the boss.
Madigan wasn't indicted for any of this.
But he's guilty of it.
I hope this doesn't take years to get to trial. I hope for the names of those sell-out union leaders in the IFT, IEA and CTU come out.
I've waited a long time already.
https://fredklonsky.substack.com/p/madigan-goes-down-teacher-union-collaboration
