Troutman to remain on Feb. 27 ballot
With her mother and two dozen cheering supporters standing behind her, Ald. Arenda Troutman (20th) said today she will remain on the Feb. 27 ballot and “continue to fight for my people” while her attorneys fight federal charges that she shook down a corrupt developer.
Troutman would not talk about the charges she faces, nor about the statements she allegedly made on secretly recorded tapes in which she appeared to incriminate herself and also to insult other politicians.
“I have been an upstanding aldermen for 17 years,” Troutman said. “I will still continue to fight for my people in this city, in the 20th Ward, and stand strong.”
(Rich Hein/Sun-Times)
Troutman was charged Monday with taking bribes — $5,000 in cash with a promise of $10,000 more, along with free residential and commerical space, according to prosecutors — to grease development of a strip shopping center that wasn’t even in her ward.
FBI agents raided Troutman’s South Side home and broke a window to get in, saying Troutman had looked out a window but refused to open the door. A shredder inside the house was warm when they finally entered, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times.
An FBI affidavit quoted Troutman as telling a corrupt developer who was seeking her support for a project, “What do I get out of it?” She was also quoted as saying, “Most aldermen, most politicians are hos.” She has since told her furious colleagues on the City Council that the statement was taken out of context and that she was just repeating what the corrupt developer said.
Troutman’s attorney, Sam Adam Jr., told reporters she was “chomping at the bit to tell you what I have been telling you — that she is not guilty, that she did not do these things, that she never took any money to do anything illegal inside, or, as we have now learned from the FBI and from the press, outside of her ward.”
Adam again ripped prosecutors’ case, saying: “We found out the alleged building is not in her ward . . . We read in the paper that this alleged [cooperating witness]--who has conned the government time and time again, who has a rap sheet as long as my arm, who has lied over and over again — not just to the government, but to good, hard-working, upstanding people in his own congregation. That’s what their case rests upon . . . We will face it, and we will win.”
Noting that the government has refused to release secretly recorded tapes, Adam said, “You can tell by looking at the [FBI] affidavit itself — it’s cut, paste, cut, paste. We have no idea what context those statements were in. We have no idea what the statement was prior to that. It’s my understanding . . . that the entire statement began with, ‘Somebody says these people are hos,’ or words to that effect . . . I can tell you right now she doesn’t think most of her colleagues are crooks. In fact, none of ’em.”
Attorney David Neely, who is on the Feb. 27 ballot trying to unseat Troutman, attended Troutman’s City Hall news conference, Neely repeated his call for a two-term limit for Chicago aldermen and, to the jeers of Troutman’s supporters, said: “If you look at the history of Chicago, every time a politician has been charged with committing a crime, they have press conferences. Their attorneys stand up and say they didn’t do it. There are tape recordings. There are videos. She will be indicted by Friday. And the people of the 20th Ward are being neglected.”