With agency facing probe, Brown held seminar on seeking office

The day after federal prosecutors said Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown received what they described as bribe money from an employee, Brown hosted a seminar for people interested in running for public office.

For $175 a ticket, plus $19.95 for an optional handbook, the daylong event, held on a Saturday last month, promised “instruction on every aspect of being a candidate.”

Brown was elected last year to a fifth term as clerk despite a federal grand jury investigation into her office’s hiring and promotion practices.

“I realized that a lot of people want to run for public office but they don’t really know what to do,” Brown said during the program. “I’m about the business of not being selfish but giving back, and that’s what this is all about.”

A Better Government Association reporter paid the fees and attended the first half of the seminar, held at a hotel on the West Side.

Among the eight other participants: a Cook County judge, one of Brown’s neighbors and two people who appear to have ties to Brown’s office — a $56,000-a-year manager who’s worked for her since 2004 and someone whose mother has worked for Brown, according to sources, and was paid $63,000 last year.

None of them could be reached for comment. Brown didn’t return calls.

Brown spokeswoman Jalyne Strong said the event was “not a part of the operations” of the clerk’s office and that she had “no information about it.” Strong also said, “Any attendees would have had to learn about it independent of the clerk’s office.”

On Feb. 17, the day before the seminar, the U.S. attorney’s office said Brown took a $15,000 loan — which prosecutors called a “bribe to obtain a job” — from an employee, Sivasubramani Rajaram, for a company called Goat Masters, which is owned by Brown and her husband, court records show. Vadim Glozman, an attorney with the law firm representing Brown, said the money has been repaid, “definitely wasn’t a bribe” and had “nothing to do with getting any jobs.”

Rajaram was charged in 2015 with lying to a grand jury investigating allegations of employees paying jobs and promotions in the clerk’s office. Rajaram was sentenced Monday to three years of probation.

Neither Brown nor her husband has been accused of wrongdoing.

Brown talked at the seminar about running a campaign, how to set up an organizing committee, file petitions, even how to shake hands and dress properly.

“You definitely do not go to the store with rollers in your head and a scarf on your head if you’re a woman,” she said. “You want to always dress up, even on Saturdays.”

She also talked about dealing with reporters.

“You don’t want to go on camera if there’s something negative,” Brown said. “You stick your press spokesperson out there for the negative things.”

Katie Drews is a Better Government Association investigator. Dane Placko reports for FOX 32.