Tag: Cherron Marie Phillips

During his days at the Justice Department, Patrick J. Fitzgerald perhaps was America’s most famous prosecutor. When he wasn’t prosecuting terrorism cases in New York (United States v. Usama bin Laden, et al.), he was prosecuting Mafia figures (United States v. John Gambino).

Fitzgerald, now 51 and in private practice, has drawn praise and criticism for his actions against politicians and public officials from both sides of the aisle. From Chicago, he was involved in the successful prosecution of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, in an alleged conspiracy to sell the U.S. Senate seat of Barack Obama, who’d been elected President of the United States in 2008.

And Fitzgerald also presided over the successful prosecution of Scooter Libby, a fixture in the Republican administration of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. It was an exceptionally famous “CIA leaks” case, the underpinnings of which were known as “The Plame Affair,” a sort of Watergate of the early 2000s.

Given Fitzgerald’s participation in high-profile cases against international rogues and terrorists, organized-crime figures and U.S. domestic political elites on both sides of the aisle, it’s easy to forget he also prosecuted or supervised the prosecution of ordinary cases. One such case involved a defendant by the name of Devon Phillips, who pleaded guilty to drug charges four years ago, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Cherron Marie Phillips, Phillips’ sister and a purported “sovereign citizen,” now has been charged with filing false liens that seek $100 billion each from Fitzgerald and 11 other public officials, including a chief U.S. District Judge, a U.S. District Judge, two U.S. Magistrate Judges, an assistant U.S. Attorney, a federal court clerk, four federal Task Force officers and a federal agent.

Fitzgerald and the other federal officials are not identified in the Cherron Phillips indictment, but the indictment charges a bogus lien for $100 billion was filed by Phillips in Chicago against a “United States Attorney” on March 14, 2011. The famed prosecutor was Chicago’s U.S. Attorney (the Northern District of Illinois) on that date.

If Phillips were to get her way, every man, woman and child in the United States would owe her brother $3,821.65, a figure arrived at by dividing $1.2 trillion — the sought-after sum — by 314 million, the approximate U.S. population.

The liens were filed in the “public record of the Cook County Recorder of Deeds,” according to the indictment.

Based on the content of the indictment and other records, it appears as though the office of U.S. Attorney Stephen R. Wigginton of the Southern District of Illinois is prosecuting the case against Phillips to remove any questions about whether she could be treated fairly by prosecutors in the Northern District of Illinois. Fitzgerald once led the Northern District and, as noted above, he and an assistant U.S. Attorney from that office allegedly were targeted in the liens caper.

The indictment did not say whether taxpayers will incur additional expenses because of the need for a prosecutor in a different district to handle the case. There have been instances in other states in which both federal judges and federal prosecutors have recused themselves because of actions brought by purported “sovereigns.” Judges from other districts and even other states effectively have been flown in to preside over such matters, invariably because the officials targeted in liens capers become potential witnesses.