Report: Claypool lied to cover up ethics breach

Mayor Rahm Emanuel's schools chief "repeatedly lied" to investigators and engaged in a "full-blown cover-up" of behavior that he and the top attorney for Chicago Public Schools engaged in over the past 20 months, the CPS inspector general says in a report released Thursday.

In a blistering, 103-page document he sent Tuesday to the Chicago Board of Education, Inspector General Nicholas Schuler said he was "left with no recourse but to conclude" that the board should fire CPS CEO Forrest Claypool.

But Emanuel rushed to Claypool's defense after the release of the report. And Frank Clark, the president of the school board - whose members were chosen by Emanuel - also has praised Claypool since getting the report.

In his final report on the long-running probe, Schuler said he began investigating last year, prompted by a Chicago Sun-Times article that "raised the question of whether" CPS general counsel Ronald Marmer - a longtime friend of Claypool - had violated the schools' ethics code.

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