CHICAGO — After five years as Chicago’s top federal prosecutor, John Lausch probably didn’t envision the news of his departure would come out like it did.
A crush of national media had assembled in Washington on Thursday for an update from U.S. Attorney Merrick Garland on Lausch’s review of classified documents found in a private office used by President Joe Biden.
As Lausch stood silently on the stage next to his boss, Garland announced that Lausch and his team had determined that a special counsel was warranted for a more in depth investigation into the Biden documents, but it was already known that Lausch could not take on that role.
“When I first contacted Mr. Lausch about this matter, he said he could lead the initial investigation but would be unable to accept any longer term assignment because he would be leaving the department in early 2023 for the private sector,” Garland told reporters.
Garland instead said he was appointing Robert K. Hur, the former U.S. attorney for Maryland, to serve as special counsel. He thanked Lausch for his “professionalism and speed” in leading the initial review of the Biden documents, before walking quickly off the stage.
Lausch did not speak during the short news conference, and neither he nor Garland took any questions.
Joseph Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago later said Lausch, 52, is not resigning immediately, and that his exit has been in the works for some time.
“We expect that John will be moving on by the end of February or early March,” Fitzpatrick said.
It wasn’t the first time Lausch’s job status has made news. A nominee of Republican President Donald Trump, Lausch was originally asked by the incoming Biden administration to step down from his post in 2021 along with other Trump holdovers.
But Lausch was allowed to stay on the job after an unusual push from Illinois’ two Democratic senators, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, who extolled Lausch as a corruption buster who needed to see through investigations of some of the state’s most powerful politicians.
The White House announced in February 2021 that Lausch could remain in office until a successor was nominated and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, though no official search for a replacement ever materialized.
Lausch, who hails from Joliet and currently lives in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood, captained the 1987 state champion Joliet Catholic football team and later was a linebacker and team captain at Harvard University.
He was nominated by Trump after Durbin and Duckworth aided the White House in the search. Lausch succeeded Zachary Fardon, who stepped down from the post after Trump asked for the resignations of all Obama administration-era U.S. attorney holdovers.
Lausch was sworn in as U.S. attorney on Nov. 22, 2017, two weeks after being confirmed by unanimous voice vote in the Senate.
He is currently overseeing a number of high-profile investigations, including the racketeering case against Chicago Alderman Edward Burke, the bribery probe involving Commonwealth Edison, and the bombshell charges levied against ex-House Speaker Michael Madigan last March.
If his exit date holds, Lausch will be leaving just before the trial of the so-called “ComEd Four” gets underway at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, which is likely to be the biggest public corruption trials in Chicago since former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was convicted by a jury 12 years ago.
Once Lausch steps down, the first assistant U.S. attorney, Morris “Sonny” Pasqual, would likely take over on an interim basis while a search is conducted and a nominee is chosen by the president — a process that often takes months to play out. Garland could also appoint someone else to the interim role.
Lausch’s five-plus years on the high-octane job exceeds the terms of many of his predecessors, including Fardon, who served as U.S. attorney for about 3 1/2 years beginning in 2013 before leaving for a private Chicago law firm.
Before Fardon, Patrick Fitzgerald, who also earned a reputation as a nonpartisan corruption fighter, served for nearly 12 years as U.S. attorney in Chicago under Democratic and Republican presidents.
Lausch, however, took over in a hyper-partisan era and had to navigate a number of thorny issues, many of which arose from Trump’s constant trolling of Chicago on Twitter over issues such as gun violence and immigration.
In a sit-down with reporters a few months into his tenure, Lausch, was careful to steer clear of any political questions, saying he was not getting pressure from Washington to change any office policies but declining to comment specifically about Trump’s tweets.
In 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions tapped Lausch to oversee the process of sorting through roughly 880,000 records in part of the House probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
The politically charged issue of Chicago violence came to a head again two years later, when Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2020 threatened to sue after Trump announced he was sending federal agents to Chicago to tackle violent crime, which she said was done without her permission.
A similar move Portland, Oregon, had led to widespread denouncement after unidentified federal agents wearing camouflage uniforms were recorded making arrests.
Lightfoot changed her tone after speaking with Lausch, her former colleague at the U.S. attorney’s office whom she said she admired and trusted. The mayor said Lausch assured her an influx of law enforcement would be working “collaboratively” with Chicago cops against violent crime.
Amid that turmoil, Lausch was also leading his office through the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, which virtually shut down the courthouse for a significant period, led to difficulties assembling grand juries to hear cases and has left a backlog of criminal defendants awaiting trial.
In addition the public corruption probes, Lausch has earned a reputation for going after Chicago’s street gangs, which he’d done previously as an assistant U.S. attorney under Fitzgerald.
Since he took over, Lausch’s office has charged more than 80 reputed gang members under the federal racketeering statute, which brings hefty mandatory minimum sentences and in some cases can carry the death penalty.
Most recently, the leader of the West Side’s notoriously violent Wicked Town gang faction was convicted along with an associate of RICO charges involving a string of murders, shootings, robberies, beatings and other violence going back two decades.
“We’ve seen the gangs change and shift,” Lausch told The Chicago Tribune in an interview in 2021. “They’re more factionalized. ... When we’re looking at the drivers of violence, we’ve seen a lot of it relate to turf and social media and retaliation upon retaliation. And this is a way from a federal law enforcement standpoint that we can make an impact.”
