Did pressure from feds help kill Chris Kelly?
The headline on my Wednesday column feels eerie now. “Decision time for Blago fund-raiser Kelly” it read.
I had just seen Christopher Kelly plead guilty for a second time this year in federal court. And a third indictment and trial still loomed large on his horizon.
Before the judge, he spoke of the pressure he felt from prosecutors.
He looked like a man with an anvil on his head.
The decision Kelly was facing, I wrote, was whether to flip.
Whether to fall into the arms of the feds and turn against his longtime friend and indicted co-defendant, Rod Blagojevich, in the corruption and racketeering case set for next June.
“I don’t know Kelly’s life story,” I wrote. “But decision time is now or never. Sit at the defense table with Rod Blagojevich next spring. Or sit in the witness box and sing.”
Kelly’s sudden death Saturday means he will do neither.
An autopsy will determine exactly how he died. But even the most tough-minded law enforcement professionals, if they allow for a moment of introspection, will ask themselves if all that federal pressure, in the end, helped kill Kelly.
It was a question I posed Saturday to former federal prosecutor Patrick Collins. He sent former Gov. George Ryan to prison — and not once but twice indicted Ryan’s chief of staff, Scott Fawell.
“I don’t know of a federal suspect charged three times,” Collins said by phone. “I think it’s unprecedented.”
Collins added: “I was struck by [Kelly] talking about the pressure he was under.”
But Collins said there are too many unknowns to make assumptions. Like the full depth of Kelly’s criminal problems. Or other kinds of pressure he might be under.
Look, as the saying goes, the feds can indict a ham sandwich. They are a force to be reckoned with inside and outside of a grand jury.
Fawell has claimed that Collins and his team put the screws to him, forcing him to choose between saving the woman he loved from a stiff prison sentence or turning on Ryan.
Fawell turned.
But then again, let’s remember that Fawell was guilty.
And so was Chris Kelly.
Guilty of trying to hide massive gambling debts from the IRS.
Guilty of bid-rigging at O’Hare.
And though we’ll never know, maybe guilty of helping Blagojevich run government like a racket, something the former governor fiercely denies. He’s in New York getting ready to hawk his book on Howard Stern’s radio show on Monday.
Any way you cut it, Kelly was in terrible trouble of his own making.
And there were plenty of warning signs early on.
A political friend tells the story of a very high-ranking former Democratic officeholder who, working as an attorney, asked for a private meeting with then-Gov. Blagojevich regarding a sensitive issue. It was 2003, just after Blagojevich had been elected.
When the man arrived at the governor’s office, he was shocked to see Kelly, Blagojevich’s biggest fund-raiser, present in the room. “You can say anything in front of Chris,” Blagojevich reportedly said.
The man turned and left and later told my friend that “something smelled bad in there.”
The tragedy of Chris Kelly was that he was bright, educated and successful.
But on the day of his death, he had only six days left before he had to report to federal prison.
Fawell today is out of prison. He summed up his experience this way last month: “Illinois politics is a contact sport. . . . Get in the game and you may get hurt. I paid a very serious price.”
Not as serious as Chris Kelly.
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