Feds’ fishing trip in Sandoval waters points to big catch ahead

Sen. Martin Sandoval has been a busy man.

A search warrant of the state senator’s Springfield office made public Friday shows federal investigators appear to be looking into at least 10 distinct alleged schemes involving the newly resigned chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee.

Red-light cameras, video gambling, road contracts, family businesses, real estate developments and the state’s largest public utility are all caught up in some way in Sandoval’s suspected mischief.

I wish we could tell you exactly what Sandoval has gotten himself into, but for now all we have are a tantalizing list of names of businesses and individuals, arranged to suggest their linkage to different avenues of inquiry being pursued by investigators.

For Sandoval, the most troubling name on the search warrant may be Monarca Inc. That’s a company listing his wife Marina as the president.

I don’t know what Mrs. Sandoval’s company does, or how it might be mixed up in this. This is the first we’d heard of it.

But I can tell you when politicians put their family members in harm’s way through their own monkey business, federal authorities have a pressure point that can result in submission faster than any mixed martial arts hold.

All they have to do is squeeze.

Ouch.

Then there are the federal hieroglyphics, in particular a mention of CW1.

CW is fedspeak for Cooperating Witness. That means that even before agents served the warrant there was somebody inside Sandoval’s world who was providing authorities with information about some alleged wrongdoing — in this case involving an unnamed Lobbyist A and Lobbyist B.

John O’Connor/AP photo

That was two weeks ago. You can bet there are more CWs by now.

One of the new names put in play by the search warrant was Cesar Santoy, a Berwyn alderman who was appointed earlier this year to the Illinois Tollway board by Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

I found that interesting because I just recently watched a video of a tollway board meeting from a few years back in which Sandoval raised hell with Latino tollway officials for not doing enough to look out for the interests of Hispanic contractors after one of his big donors lost out on a bid. Sandoval made a lot of threats.

Then Pritzker gets elected, and somebody from Sandoval’s orbit is appointed to the tollway board.

It also was notable that the search warrant specifically was looking for any items related to John Harris, a top executive in Michael Vondra’s road building empire.

Harris has a bad habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was in Rich Daley’s budget office just as the spit hit the fan on the Hired Truck program, then was Rod Blagojevich’s chief of staff just as the former governor was caught going completely off the rails.

AP Photo/The State Journal-Register, Jonathan Kirshner

His cooperation against Blagojevich allowed him to get off with a 10-day prison sentence. He might not be as fortunate if he gets in trouble again.

It should be noted those named in the Sandoval search warrant could end up being nothing more than witnesses, possibly even victims. Possibly.

The one thing missing from the Sandoval search warrant is an obvious link upward on the political food chain.

Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times

The assumption around here is that the U.S. attorney’s office has been fishing for the great white sharks of Illinois politics, getting their hooks into Ald. Edward M. Burke while also in obvious pursuit of House Speaker Michael Madigan.

In Sandoval they would appear to be trying to land more of a wicked tuna, and not sashimi grade at that, although the breadth of the search warrant suggests I may have underestimated Sandoval’s “What’s in it for me” approach.

There is one major Illinois political figure who ought to be eyeing the Sandoval search warrant with concern.

Senate President John Cullerton reported receiving campaign donations on May 3 from many of the same companies and individuals either named in the Sandoval search warrant or otherwise known to be involved in the broader federal investigation.

It’s a fun time to be a reporter, not so much an Illinois elected official.