Chicago developer/Olympics bid pusher found dead; Update: Three prominent Windy City politico suicides in two years
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Michael Scott’s name came up several times during the Obama-lympics 2016 debacle. He was one of many Chicago cronies who stood to gain from the bid.
The local papers in Chicago sniffed out his conflicts of interest as an Olympics committee member who was also involved in trying to develop a for-profit real estate project that would sit within feet of the cycling venue if Chicago won the games.
Scott also served as the Chicago School Board president and used his position to urge principals to push the failed Olympics bid.
Scott was in hot water with the feds over an education corruption scandal and had been issued a subpoena:
…federal prosecutors issued a subpoena in late July to Chicago Public School Board President Michael Scott as part of an investigation to determine whether principals at the city’s nine highly-competitive high schools improperly selected students based on clout rather than academic achievement. Prosecutors are seeking all correspondence related to applicants who applied and were accepted, plus all related material including test scores and recommendations.
City school officials would not comment, nor would Justice Department officials in Chicago.
Simpson says the findings will be of high interest to Chicago parents because of the intense competition that takes place each year to get into the best schools.
“If it’s a rigged system then … it means their child was denied the right to go to a good school. It really matters to them,” he says.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports today that Scott’s body was found near the Chicago River early this morning:
Chicago School Board President Michael Scott had a gunshot wound to the left temple when authorities found his body in the Chicago River near the Merchandise Mart early this morning, sources said.
An autopsy will be performed later today to rule how Scott, 60, died. He was reported missing from his home in the Monroe police district on the Near West Side in Chicago Sunday, sources said.
His car — a blue Cadillac — was found parked near the river where the body was found, police said. It was towed from the scene.
Fire crews arrived about 3:20 a.m. to recover the body just west of the Apparel Center at 350 N. Orleans St., home of the Chicago Sun-Times.
A Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman did not return calls for comment.
The Sun-Times hints at even bigger troubles for Scott:
West Side Ald. Isaac Carothers (29th) praised Scott on Monday, saying “he was a great individual who added value to every position he served” in city government.
Carothers — who was indicted in May for allegedly accepting $40,000 in home improvements, meals and sports tickets from a West Side developer in exchange for zoning changes that netted the developer millions — spent a year secretly recording public officials and real estate developers for the feds, the Sun-Times disclosed earlier this year.
On Monday, Carothers cut off a conversation with a reporter when asked whether he had recorded any conversations with Scott.
He would only say, “He was just a great friend and a great individual. My heart goes out to his family. It’s just a tragedy.”
Carothers said he has known Scott for “15-to-20 years, at least.”
“He was a great negotiator, a great facilitator,” the alderman said.
Pressed further about any business dealings he might have had with Scott, Carothers said, “All I have is what I gave you.” He then hung up the phone.
It’s a sad, grim reminder of how deep and self-destructive the culture of corruption runs in the Chicago political bloodstream.
***
Flashback: Culture of corruption: Blago’s dead fundraiser Chris Kelly and Team Obama
***
Update: Scott’s death has been ruled a suicide — making it the third prominent Chicago politico suicide in two years.
Michael Scott’s suicide marks the third suicide among prominent public officials in the last two years — and each of the men were being investigated by authorities or already convicted of wrongdoing.
Scott, former Balgojevich aide Chris Kelly and former Stroger aide Orlando Jones all died by their own hand.
Scott, who was found with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound Monday morning, was a mover and shaker in Chicago politics and a prominent member of the African-American community here.
Earlier this year, Scott was scrutinized over Olympics-related real estate dealings.
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I’m not an expert or anything, but taking a wild guess, I’d say the cause of death was the gunshot wound to the head.
I always wonder if any of this sleaze will successfully lead back to Odumbo himself?
[Tessio brings in Luca Brasi's bulletproof vest, delivered with a fish inside]
Sonny: What the hell is this?
Clemenza: It’s a Sicilian message. It means Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes.
The Chicago Way.
Reminds me of Vince Foster…
A big question to be answered is whether Mr. Scott was left handed or not.
Was Rahm or Axelrod in Chicago this weekend?
Maybe we can coin a new term for Democratic presidencies. . . being ‘vince fostered’.
Like ‘Palinized’, or the new fav ‘scazzafavaed’.
I have always thought that the reason Obama went to Copenhagen to lobby for the Olympics in Chicago was to try to save a lot of a**es in Chicago.
It will be interesting to see what the cause of death is. It was obviously not of “natural causes”.
Let’s not jump to any conclusions…
Left temple, was he left-handed?
Nothing more gun control can’t fix!
I wonder how long he had been missing that his family reported him missing Sunday.
Also, while I have never killed myself
how easy is it to shoot yourself and fall in a river? That sounds tricky.
Oh, wait. Don’t we need a description of the gun? We need to identify the purp. The gun did the shooting… those evil guns.
I wonder if Derrion Albert was denied access to a better school because of chronieism….
Karma can be a real bistch.
Speaking of Vince Foster….if Mr. Scott was not left-handed, he will be by the time the report is finished.
I wonder what kind of connections he had to Arne Duncan, the current Sec’y of Education.
K2,
I wonder if the gun was legal, I thought chitown bans guns.
SCOTUS is hearing case this year.
Damn Leftist to the end wasn’t he?
Hillary Clinton has been called home to help with the investigation-she is an expert in such things. Only the “smartest women in America” can solve a gun shot suicide committed without a gun or bullet.
bansharia, yep. So the person who sold him the gun and then the bullets will be put on trial! Oh, but there was an exclusion – because one prominant Chicagoan had a ‘gun collection’…. don’t remember the full details, but this created a way around the unconstitutional law.
(or at least I am hopeful the SCOTUS will see it that way)
Not a chance. His circle has been giving him plausible denial from all the way back when he was a community organizer.
If anyone has slipped up, they would fall on their swords to protect him. Literally. And if they wouldn’t ………
These people around Obama are fanatics.
Well try as I may the only sadness I can muster is that a similar corruptocrat will replace him and the chillin will continue to be used as fodder for liberalism.
On the upside the swimmer will have someone to chat with in hell.
R2,
ahh yes thats it I am a collector
SCOTUS better not blow this case the 5-4 of Heller was bad enuff and the same atty is on our side….
I would not be surprised.
However, IMO, that won’t happen until a good number more “cronies” and “associates” are found dead.
It’s like “Arkansas of the North”…or, perhaps Arkansas in the Clinton years was “Chicago/Illinois of the South”?
I suspect Jan, or possibly Ryan.
Now we know what Valerie Jarrett has been doing with her free time.
It will be interesting to find out if he was left handed? I beleive this was a hit. He probably knew way too much. Chicago politics will get you killed. Can you imagine the thuggery that our president has been privy to?
I can’t believe it took this many comments for a reference to “The Office”. It was the first thing I thought when I read it.
I suspect Dwight. He’s always had his eye on Michael’s job.
as they say in South Africa:
Ag, shame.
Apparantly he got a brain cramp at the worst possible time.
Dwigt is too much of a toady; my money is on Creed.
I also would not rule out Stanley… because he’s very disgruntled… not because I’m racist or anything.
You can take the thug out of the ghetto, but you can’t take the ghetto out of the thug.
He worked hard to bring the ghetto to all your neighborhoods.
This troubling thought just crossed my mind:
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Now that the socialists have the legislature (they’ve owned the courts for decades); and the executive, including all its departments and czars, particularly the erroneously named “justice” department; does anything approaching “witness protection” actually even exist any longer?
Think about it: What better, more convenient and effective way for corrupt socialist thugs, who are embedded in our federal governement, to get rid of problematic individuals who are being “investigated” by the feds; than to “accidently on purpose” fail to protect witnesses and suspects from mob hits?
In essence, we ultimately (i.e., those who control the “levers of power”) have the mob thugs investigating themselves.
Reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw.
“Guns kill people the way
spoons made Rosie O’Donnell fat”
Is there a protection program when the government is trying to kill you? Where in this world could you go to obtain asylum?
Another black politician way in over his head !
Exactly!
oh please oh please oh please, Lord, I just can’t wait to see barry perp-walked out of the White House and shoved into the back of a police vehicle. I swear if he gets one item(monument, street, building) in this country named after him, I will do my darnedest to vandalize every inch of that object with dog poo for the rest of my days.
Interesting thread in the news. There are multiple sources claiming that this was a suicide, but there is not a single reference to whether he was right or left handed. I would imagine that would be an important clue here.
Seriously is ther any evidence that he was left handed?
Just a quick google search for Michael Scott Chicago images shows the image below. He sure looks right handed here.
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/_singer640.jpg
If he is right handed, then suicide with a shot to his left temple seems unlikely.
I also saw another picture through the same search with 3 people fishing. They all looked right handed, but it hard to tell in that photo if one of them is Michael Scott.
He committed suicide by shooting himself 4 times in the back from a distance of 10 feet.
whaddya mean, FruNobulux—did he take the Stephen Biko way out?
In this image, he wore a watch on his right wrist. Might be a sign of left-handedness.
In this image, he’s holding a pen in his left hand. Granted, not completely conclusive by itself, but it sure seems he was left handed.
Pausing to reload only once.
On the surface I’d say good riddance . . . save the taxpayers the cost of a trial, but then again, he can’t turn on his cronies and make a deal ala Joe Velachi either. Which I think is the reason for his “suicide”.
I wonder if any blood is in the car. Sitting in the drivers position, the left temple is acessible thru the drivers window.
Dwight Schrute
Assistant to theRegional ManagerUmm, is it common to get a coroner’s final cause/manner of death on the same day (without a note, I would presume) when it involves a gun shot wound? Seems a little rushed to me….
Only a little off topic:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/11/the-white-house-tracking-on-atlas-readers.html
Visitors to Atlas Shrugs and to Politico have had a http://www.whitehouse.gov cookie inserted onto their computer hard drive.
I checked a minute ago; and yup, I found that cookie.
More than a little unsettling and outrageous.
Anyone else found that cookie?
Nothing to see here folks, move along…
But I thought handguns were illegal in Chicago? Was this a registered firearm? Did he have a permit? Does this make him a gunman instead of victim? Perhaps we need to publish the name and address of every public official in Chicago that owns a firearm.
Nothing to see here either folks, move along…
They are all guilty of shooting off their mouths!
I live in the Chicago area. These weren’t suicides. Three corrupt yahoos with Obama-ties suddenly die when they are about to be squished under the thumb of federal investigators and squeal like the pigs they are? Not coincidence. Murder. Hell, one was shot execution style in the head and dumped in the river. You don’t have to watch the Sopranos to know why Scott is sleeping with the fishes. Every time the feds dig up one of these parasitical leeches and has them on the cusp of turning state witness they mysteriously die under mysterious circumstances. But ignore it folks. Cause the police or coroner is always on hand to rule it a suicide before the body is cold. Chicago is corrupt from top to bottom and Obama is tied into it all.
Speaking of witness “protection”…:
How high up the food chain is Tony Rezko?
I would think that it is not a stretch that he’ll be found dead while he is under investigation, or while he is in jail, a la Jim McDougal.
Dead body found with a gunshot wound to the head and the weapon also found at the site. Though a suicide is very likely, it would seem an investigation is warranted to determine if he was executed. But we are talking about Chicago, so the law and justice aren’t necessarily relevant.
On topic:
Has anyone heard any more about the “apparent suicide” death of the high-level (?top?) Freddie Mac executive David Kellerman this past
april?
…April?
Stupid question, but was there GSR on his left hand? were there any prints on the gun? Were they all his?
B, don’t jump to conclusions. Our jug-eared nit wit leader says that.
“jug-eared nit wit” comment credit to Republianvet.
No Whitehouse cookie here. Perhaps it is from where everyone went to “turn themselves in”. I’m glad I never did, lord only knows where that data will end up.
Hey granite, it may not be that big of a deal. If this cookie was appearing without someone visiting the site (this includes some content that other sites might directly pull from whitehouse.gov), then I might be curious. The chances are probably pretty good that political blogs have hit whitehouse.gov at some point, particularly over the whole Anita Dunn story.
It’s not really all that unsettling when you understand the technology. Some sites (including Michelle’s) create cookies to remember the user’s preferences or login. Some might just be there to update the “what’s new” section appropriately.
Cookies, by themselves, can’t do much. They are non-executable text files and browsers treat them separately by site for security reasons. If you’re concerned, you can increase the security checking on your browser to refuse cookies or prompt you for permission to put them on your drive.
Understood.
Thank you.
I think it’s more than likely that these were all part of the ME’s reason for declaring it a suicide. As crooked as he might have been, it just seems like Occam’s razor applies here.
On further review, I see that it’s flash cookies they’re noticing. This underscores in my mind that anyone that watched a video from the .gov site (even on another blog) would have that cookie (typically sites would just link to the source and not pull down their own copy). The problem with flash cookies is that they’re a bit harder to clean up or refuse, but there are tools for that.
Who’d a thunk it….edumacation is dern dangerous in chicago.
Nobody jumps to conclusion about his death, damn it!
Poor fella might have died from natural causes i.e. inability to breath Oxygen from beneath H2O.
Many politicians in Chicago are slick.
When near the water’s edge, some of them slip. That’s all!
The fewer prominent Chicago politicians, the better. In a just world they would become extinct.
Gunshot wound to the left temple…
Was he left handed? Any body checking on that. Not that I expect leftists to know how to do anything “right” but a “righty” shooting himself in the left temple is kind of tough…
Don’t jump the gun (pun intended) on the handedness thing.
I’m left-handed for writing and eating, but right-handed for sports and can use either hand for ping pong. My grandfather was the opposite. Being completely left-handed is pretty rare.
In fact, although I don’t have a gun and haven’t ever shot a real one, when I used my kid’s toy guns I used them with my right hand.
I agree. I posted the links to the images of Scott as possible evidence of being left-handed, but it’s certainly not conclusive.
The only counterpoint that I would offer is that while you have ambidextrous traits, I believe it’s conversely uncommon for predominantly right-handed people to do anything requiring high dexterity with their left-hand only. I might suggest that left-handed people using their right hand for activities such as you mentioned might be because the world just seems geared for right-handers and lefties adapt by developing more dexterity in their off-hand.
I would be highly skeptical of a right-handed person using his left hand for suicide.
They parked that cookie on me and I still have no problem asking if these guys were “Vince Foster’ed”
COME AND GET ME!!!
Suicide in the sense that crossing the wrong people in Chicago is “suicide.”
If I were to commit suicide, I sure wouldn’t drive to a place that can best be described as a riverside dump. That’s I would drive someone for execution.
Obama: That gun acted stupidly!
correction:
That’s WHERE I would drive someone for execution.
Good grief!
now if all the other Chicago fraud/commie crew would have crises of conscience and follow suit. Jarrett can lead off, and Rahm can go next, and the greasyhaired python Axelrod can complete the hat trick. Rock Creek Park is a nice peaceful spot, highly recommended.
That’s high praise coming from a man indicted for subtracting value from the positions he served.
Just like my mom always said – Give ‘em enough rope…
Please, please do not let me make a joke out of this tragedy, please. Please do not me say something cruel such as “three-that’s a start”. Please.
Again, would it not be four, if the case of Kellerman of Freddie Mac is included?
Or, should that case not be counted, since it occurred in a suburb of D.C.?
that’s a start granite
Whatever happened to Key witness in passport fraud case fatally shot?
Why hasn’t BO called Scott to rise up from the dead? I hope it wasn’t BO’s white half being racist!