CHICAGO _ In a surprise move for a high-profile public corruption case, federal prosecutors in Chicago have agreed to drop all charges against former U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock if he pays back money he owes to the Internal Revenue Service and his campaign fund.
The stunning deal, known as a deferred prosecution agreement, was announced Wednesday during what was supposed to be a routine status hearing for Schock.
According to the agreement, Schock, 37, must pay back taxes to the IRS and $68,000 to his congressional campaign funds. If he does so _ and stays out of any new trouble for six months _ prosecutors would drop all felony counts against the Illinois Republican in September, leaving him with a clean record.
As part of the deal, Schock's campaign committee, Schock for Congress, pleaded guilty Wednesday to a misdemeanor count of failing to properly report expenses.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly approved the deal after prosecutors said they had taken a fresh look at the charges and decided this would be a "fair and just" outcome, especially given that Schock has no criminal record and resigned from public office.
The abrupt resolution came six months after Schock _ in a stroke of luck _ had his case transferred out of Springfield because the judge overseeing the matter was accused of having improper contact with the prosecutors' office in an unrelated case. Schock had been scheduled to go to trial June 10 in Chicago.
Schock's attorney, George Terwilliger, said Wednesday he offered to speak to prosecutors under U.S. Attorney John Lausch almost as soon as they took over the case last summer.
"We felt all along that if some reasonable prosecutor would sit down and objectively look at the facts here, they would come to the same conclusions that we did _ that is, that mistakes are not crimes," Terwilliger said.
The case "began with a bang, and that bang turned out to be a blank," he said. "And now it's ending with a whimper."
Joseph Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for Lausch, said the office "conducted a thorough review of the case before proceeding" with Wednesday's agreement.
Schock, once considered a rising star in the Republican Party, resigned in 2015 amid the federal investigation into his use of his campaign funds and House allowance to pay personal expenses ranging from an extravagant remodeling of his Washington office inspired by the British television series "Downton Abbey" to flying on a private plane to attend a Chicago Bears game.
Schock was charged in a 24-count indictment in November 2016 with wire fraud, mail fraud, theft of government funds, making false statements, filing false reports with federal election officials and filing false tax returns. A judge later dismissed two of those counts.
Dressed in a dark suit and sporting a trimmed beard, Schock showed little expression in court Wednesday as he reviewed the terms of the agreement. After court, he told reporters in the lobby of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse he was happy to have the weight of the prosecution lifted from his shoulders.
But he also accused the lead prosecutor who originally brought the charges in Springfield _ Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Bass _ of pursuing the case to advance his own career.
"I do feel like I've been wronged in this process by a prosecutor who saw me as his ticket to stardom and who was allowed to go unchecked for many years at great expense to me personally, my family and friends, and, yes, the taxpayers," Schock said. "I think it's unfortunate that he has not been held to account, and I think the question it begs is how did this go on for so long?"
Bass did not return a call seeking comment, and a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Springfield declined to comment.
The news of the agreement drew reaction from at least one of Schock's former colleagues in Congress _ one who also faced federal charges alleging he used campaign funds to furnish a lavish lifestyle.
"Before I went to prison, I paid back every cent from my campaign as well, a second mortgage," former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and was sentenced to 2 { years in prison, posted on Facebook. "I paid back every dollar, but I still had to go to prison. It's all good though, I am happy for Aaron. He was great to serve with."
The deferred prosecution could mean that Schock's once-promising political career isn't necessarily over since he avoided a felony conviction.
He first entered public life at 19 when he won a write-in campaign to be elected to the Peoria school board. He was elected to Congress in 2009 at age 27 and was hailed as the first House member born in the 1980s. He was seen as a darling of the Republican Party and had taken on crucial political fundraising roles at the time of his resignation.
The 52-page indictment portrayed Schock as treating government and campaign funds as a personal piggy bank _ opulently decorating his office, buying a staffer a new car, handing out excessive bonuses, paying for travel to get a haircut and flying on a private airplane to attend a Bears game.
Shock also had an appetite for buying and reselling tickets to sporting events, according to the indictment. From 2009 through 2013, the government noted that Schock bought and sold 46 World Series tickets and eight Super Bowl tickets, earning a total profit of $22,425.
Before Wednesday's bombshell development, Schock's lawyers had tried unsuccessfully to get the indictment thrown out, saying the charges were based on ambiguous House rules in violation of separation-of-power clauses in the Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to take up his appeal.
In his six-page agreement with prosecutors, Schock acknowledged he had a "regular practice as a public officeholder" of obtaining event tickets at face value and later selling them for a big profit. He admitted that through this side practice, he failed to report $42,375 in income to the IRS over his six years in office.
Schock also admitted overbilling the House of Representatives for mileage as he drove around his district for both official and campaign purposes.
Terwilliger, Schock's lawyer, said after court that the mileage issue amounted to an administrative mistake.
"But those kinds of mistakes aren't crimes," Terwilliger said. "I mean, God help us in this country if every time any of us made a mistake in some administrative matter it was the basis for a felony prosecution."
Terwilliger also said he hoped officials within U.S. Department of Justice will take a "hard look" at what happened with Schock's case.
"The original prosecutor in the case was openly seeking appointment to higher office," he said. "You do the math in terms of what that might mean as to why this case was pursued. ... If you investigate anybody long enough and hard enough, you'll probably find something that you could cobble together to charge them with. I think that's what happened here."
Schock, meanwhile, would not say if he intends to ever seek public office again.
"I don't know what the future holds, but I'm looking forward to being able to resume some semblance of a private life and looking for ways to contribute to society," he said before leaving the courthouse.
