A south suburban mayor who’s long pitched himself as a reformer has refused to testify about alleged corruption in his town because the answers could be used by authorities against him.
A deposition transcript — filed late Thursday — shows longtime Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg was questioned in a lawsuit about an allegedly fraudulent deal tied to a longtime political ally. Kellogg repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to not answer questions about it, as well as about an older allegation that he framed an innocent man with a gun charge over a dispute about cocaine.
Kellogg spokesman Sean Howard said the city does not comment on pending litigation. And defense lawyers caution that people using the tactic are not necessarily guilty of a crime. They may merely fear that their responses could be used to prosecute them.
Still, Kellogg’s silence under oath made him the second top Harvey official this year to invoke that constitutional right to avoid answering questions about alleged corruption in a suburb that the Tribune profiled this year as the Chicago area’s most lawless.
Three council members reached by the Tribune expressed dismay at Kellogg’s action. Ald. Shirley Drewenski said it looks “horrible, just horrible.”
“This whole situation is disheartening,” she said.
The release of Kellogg’s July 31 deposition comes days after his town made national news for a 21-hour hostage standoff, in which two Harvey officers were shot and suffered minor injuries. Kellogg became a visible presence at the scene, escorting an injured officer, cautioning residents to stay inside and thanking outside law enforcement for helping to end the standoff peacefully.
Brewing below the surface for years, however, have been criminal probes and lawsuits that could damage the mayor’s portrayal of himself as a committed public servant simply striving to restore Harvey to a middle-class enclave.
In 2006 and 2012, Kellogg invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked in lawsuits about his role in returning a gun from police evidence to a friend whose son had been caught with it. A detective was convicted of giving the gun to the friend but testified that he did so on Kellogg’s orders. Kellogg was not charged.
In between, the FBI conducted a corruption investigation in which an undercover agent pumped campaign cash into helping Kellogg win re-election. Federal authorities still won’t discuss the case. Kellogg wasn’t charged in the probe.
Federal authorities’ latest interest in Harvey stems from a deal exposed by the Tribune last year. The town borrowed money supposedly to fix up a hotel that ended up being half-gutted and in foreclosure. The town comptroller’s firm got a cut of the borrowed cash while taxpayers were stuck with loan payments that could total $20 million.
Records show the Securities and Exchange Commission — the agency that regulates municipal borrowing — last fall subpoenaed Harvey for records related to the deal and then-comptroller Joseph Letke. This spring, the U.S. attorney’s office subpoenaed other suburbs where Letke worked.
Amid the subpoenas, Letke was ordered to testify as part of a lawsuit accusing the town of failing to save enough for worker pensions. Asked about a range of issues including the hotel deal, Letke invoked his constitutional right to remain silent 179 times.
Letke, a longtime Kellogg campaign contributor, kept handling the city’s books until the SEC filed suit in June accusing Letke and Harvey of committing fraud in the hotel deal.
Two months later, Kellogg was ordered to answer questions in a suit involving a former mayor-turned-felon who was fired by Letke. Ex-Calumet City Mayor Jerry Genova blamed Kellogg for getting him fired for political reasons.
Kellogg testified that he had nothing to do with Genova’s employment and brushed aside many questions by claiming the city’s day-to-day operations were overseen by administrative assistant Dreina Lewis, Kellogg’s sister.
He took a different tack when Genova’s lawyer, Patrick Walsh, asked about the hotel deal and Letke’s duties. Kellogg’s lawyer, Stepfon Smith, stepped in to say he’d told Kellogg not to “self-incriminate” because of the SEC allegations of fraud. Kellogg then refused to answer more than 50 questions about Letke or the deal.
Walsh then asked about his department’s 2006 arrest of a man who later won his freedom and a certificate of innocence. The man said he was framed after Kellogg falsely accused him of stealing the mayor’s cocaine. The mayor has previously testified that never happened. But the suburb settled a lawsuit filed by the man for $1.4 million. In the July 31 deposition, Kellogg refused to answer two questions about his interactions with the man.
Defense lawyers say use of the Fifth Amendment may be smart even for an innocent person seeking to avoid being unfairly prosecuted. But they said it’s more unusual for a public official. Attorney Ron Safer said that in 15 years of private practice and 10 years as a federal prosecutor he couldn’t recall a public official using it.
“I’ve never seen it once, let alone three times by the same individual,” Safer said. “Typically, public officials, even those under investigation, want to provide their side of the story, and are eager to do so.”
Kellogg’s silence on the hotel deal could make it harder for the town to dig itself out of heavy debt and years of overspending that, records show, was partly masked by big borrowing.
A federal judge, at the SEC’s request, banned Harvey from issuing bonds — the common way towns borrow money — at least through Sept. 23. To try to get the judge to lift the ban, the suburb blamed the alleged fraud on Letke, saying Harvey had no clue about any misdeeds.
“The City’s only mistake here was attempting to operate in good faith and to work with the Comptroller and the Developer to improve itself,” its lawyer, Tiffany Ferguson, wrote in a brief to the court June 30.
That was a month before Kellogg refused to answer questions under oath about the deal. It’s a tactic that attorney and former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot said has “totally undermined” the suburb’s original defense.
“I think that a question that will be asked is, in a city the size of Harvey, if he really didn’t know, what would be the basis for taking five? Is it plausible that he didn’t know?” she said.
