From the courthouse to the White House: How corruption becomes routine

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As a young Chicago lawyer in the 1970s, I was once shaken down for a bribe by a criminal court judge, although I was too naïve to realize it at the time.

I didn’t figure it out until about eight years later, when the judge was indicted in the U.S. Justice Department’s Operation Greylord investigation. And it took decades before I appreciated the cultural connection between tawdry corruption in a Cook County courtroom and the breathtaking venality of President Trump.

My client that day was a teenager who had been caught burglarizing a garage. It was a relatively minor offense, and he was released on $100 bail.

We arrived early on his court date and looked around for the garage owner, who was nowhere to be seen. After a few hours in the overcrowded courtroom, the prosecutor — who controlled the docket — gave up hope for his witness. He signaled the clerk to call our case.

We had barely reached the bench when the prosecutor moved to dismiss “for want of prosecution.” The judge granted the motion and turned to me.

“CBR attorney,” he said. That was code, and it wasn’t a question. CBR meant “cash bond release.” The judge assumed that, like nearly all lawyers in his gritty courtroom, I had taken my client’s bond receipt as security for my fee.

As a lawyer in the Northwestern Legal Clinic, however, I didn’t take fees.

“No, Your Honor,” I replied. “CBR defendant,” meaning that my client would get his bail money back.

The judge abruptly went ballistic. “CBR defendant!” he shouted. “CBR defendant! In my courtroom!” he fumed. Again, not a question.

“Lock him up,” he told the bailiff, pointing to my client.

My surprise turned to panic. My client had been out on bail, and the charge was dismissed, but he was suddenly jailed. In shock, I waited for a recess and asked the clerk what had gone wrong.

“Oh,” said the clerk, reading the file. “The judge didn’t know you work at the legal clinic. The kid can go home.” A few minutes later, my client was free, and I was still mystified by the judge’s outburst.

As I much later learned, the judge had been getting kickbacks from lawyers whom he allowed to hustle cases in the hallway, taking part of the money for every “CBR attorney.” Believing I was in on the scheme, he was furious that I appeared to be holding out on him.

The judge was eventually caught by federal investigators and sentenced to prison, along with dozens of other judges, lawyers and staff.

I can now see how that long-ago scandal can provide insight into our current experience with Trump’s debasement of the presidency for personal gain.

Although I had no idea why my poor client was dispatched to the lockup, almost everyone else in the courtroom knew what was going on when the judge berated me. Even those who didn’t pay to play understood the cost of doing business, and nobody said anything.

The extortion was so routine that it had become unremarkable. Thousands of bail dollars were released every day, and the judge demanded a share. Defense lawyers saw the skim as the price of the court’s indulgence. Prosecutors apparently chose to remain ignorant rather than rock the boat.

The wisdom of silent acquiescence was surely reinforced when they saw what happened to my client when I, seemingly foolishly, didn’t go along.

Now we have Trump, whose exploitation of office differs from that Cook County judge mostly in magnitude, and only somewhat in kind. In both cases, exacting tribute, either as an open secret or as no secret at all, depended on the complacency of those who should have known better.

From doubling the initiation fee at Mar-a-Lago following his first election, to touting crypto and other investments worth billions to his family, to accepting the gift of a tricked-out 747 from Qatar, Trump and his cronies have missed few opportunities to profit from his presidency.

Trump’s stunning avarice has become so blatant and unrelenting that it is barely noticeable. Insiders are either too complicit or too intimidated to object. Mainstream news outlets are so overwhelmed by the volume of self-dealing that stories can seldom develop legs.

The judge in my case thought he could extract bribes with impunity because nobody in the insular world of his courtroom questioned or challenged him. Trump’s rationale for his staggering financial conflicts of interest is similar, though on a global scale.

“I found out that nobody cared,” he told the New York Times.

The payoffs in the Cook County criminal courts only ended when they drew the attention of the Department of Justice, first under Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, a Democrat, and later under Republican William French Smith.

Trump’s nominee for attorney general is his former personal lawyer Todd Blanche. Don’t expect things to change any time soon.

Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor Emeritus at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.