Chicago Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson, the grandson and nephew of the city’s two longest-serving mayors, is poised Monday to become the first member of his family’s political dynasty to face a jury in a criminal trial.
Thompson, 52, who represents the 11th Ward where the Daley family built its once-formidable political machine, is charged with filing false tax returns and lying to federal agents about a line of credit he received from a Bridgeport bank that later collapsed.
Thompson, who has served on the City Council since 2015, was charged last April in a seven-count indictment with filing false tax returns and lying to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. officials about $219,000 in loans he’d received from clout-heavy Washington Federal Bank for Savings before it was shuttered in 2017.
“I did not commit any crime, I am innocent and I will prove it at trial,” the statement said. “The charges in the indictment do not relate in any way to my public service or to my professional life. I remain 100% dedicated to serving the people of Chicago to the best of my ability.” The case is an offshoot of a bigger probe filled with intrigue. The bank’s president, John Gembara, died by suicide at the home of a customer days before the feds shut it down. A massive federal investigation later led to criminal charges accusing a number of former bank employees and customers of running a multiyear, $31 million embezzlement scheme that doled out millions of dollars in loans with no collateral or expectation of repayment.
A questionnaire filled out last week by prospective jurors, however, does identify Thompson as a Chicago alderman and states his “grandfather was the late Mayor Richard J. Daley and his uncle is former Mayor Richard M. Daley.” With the support of his uncles, former Richard M. Daley and Cook County Commissioner and 11th Ward Democratic Committeeman John Daley, he then promptly won a seat on the City Council in 2015, representing the South Side Bridgeport neighborhood that has been his family’s seat of political power for decades.
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