Daily Egyptian

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Daily Egyptian DAILYEGYPTIAN.COM

TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 2015

Former U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock tries to block release of documents

SINCE 1916

VOL. 99 ISSUE 80

Playing catch by the lake

caitlin Wilson | Reboot Illinois The legal battle of former U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Peoria, is still being waged by his attorneys and federal prosecutors over which congressional documents Schock must turn over to the courts as potential evidence of his possible mishandling of campaign and taxpayer money during his time in office. Schock’s lawyers told the court Aug. 21 that their client owns some of the congressional records sought by the court and doesn’t have to turn them in under the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. The Chicago Tribune reports that Schock was almost held in contempt of court the day before, for the second time, for refusing to hand the documents in: On Thursday, the top federal prosecutor in the case asked U.S. District Court Judge Sue Myerscough in Springfield to consider holding Schock in contempt of court for failing to produce documents. Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Bass wrote in a court filing Thursday that “No court has recognized that a public official ... has a constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment to avoid the compelled production of publicly-funded, non-private, public or official records within his official ... office.” Another hearing meant to resolve the records questions is set for Aug. 28 in Springfield as a federal grand jury continues its investigation of Schock’s spending during his time in the U.S. House of Representatives, which ended when he resigned in March. The Chicago Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet spoke with one of Schock’s former congressional staffers, Ben Cole about the Instagram-famous representative’s time in office. Cole was Schock’s communications director for about a year before he resigned when his racially charged social media posts caught the attention of media outlets in February, around the same time that Schock’s spending came into public question. Cole got caught up in the spotlight of the situation when he tried to deter a Washington Post reporter from publishing a story about Schock’s office, newly redecorated with red walls, pheasant feathers, and bronze busts of political figures, in the style of the British show “Downton Abbey.” He told Sweet how the whole thing began: Cole said that one day in January, he was with Schock in the newly painted fire-engine red office, where some decorative items were already in place.

J acob W iegand | @JacobWiegand_DE Payton Boyd, right, a freshman from Tennessee studying criminology and criminal justice and psychology, enjoys playing a game with a flying disc on Monday by Campus Lake with Craig Krygowski, an undecided freshman in the Air Force ROTC program from Posen.

Ex-SIUE employee sentenced to probation, fine for lying to federal agents and university RobeRt PatRick | st. louis Post-disPatch A former SIU-Edwardsville employee was sentenced Friday to three years of probation and fined $2,500 for lying about contracts with his mother’s company, federal prosecutors said. At the time, Kwa Mister, 38, of Fairview Heights, was the director of the Small

Business Development Center at SIUE and managed the Highway Construction Preparatory Training Program. Mister’s mother’s company, Phoenix Support Services, had five contracts to help with the training program, but Mister concealed the “family relationship and the potential conflict of interest” from the university, prosecutors said.

He lied to SIUE about whether his mother owned Phoenix and then lied to agents of the Transportation Department’s Office of Inspector General and the Labor Department’s Office of Labor Racketeering and Fraud Investigations about whether he’d lied to SIUE, prosecutors said. Mister pleaded guilty in April to two counts of making a false statement.

Man gets three years for gas station robbery heatheR cachola| @heatheRcachola_de A man was sentenced to charges related to a robbery of a Citgo gas station that occurred in June, Jackson County State’s Attorney Michael Carr announced Monday. Quovadis D. Myers, 18, was charged with robbery — a Class Two felony —

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and sentenced to serve three years in the Department of Corrections, followed by two years of mandatory supervised release. Myers was one of three suspects sentenced following the robbery of the Citgo on South Illinois Avenue on June 5. Dylan Patton, 18, and Johnathan Thomas, 18, entered guilty pleas earlier

this year, according to the Carbondale Police Department’s website. Myers was also charged with aggravated battery because he punched the clerk during the robbery while another individual took the cash register drawer, the Jackson County state’s attorney’s office said in the press release.


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