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CHICAGO (AP) ― A defense attorney tore into the hiring fraud case against Mayor Richard M. Daley's former patronage chief as "intellectually dishonest" Monday and described a key prosecution witness as "that pig."

Jurors at the five-week fraud trial of former patronage chief Robert Sorich and three co-defendants also heard a federal prosecutor describe Daley's political apparatus as "a corrupt clout machine" that illegally loaded the city payroll with campaign workers while freezing out others.

Daley has been accused of no wrongdoing in the case, which stems from a two-year federal investigation that began by focusing on bribes paid to city officials by private trucking companies in exchange for hauling jobs.

The investigation has grown to include alleged violations of a 30-year-old court order banning political hiring to fill all but about 1,300 of the 38,000 city jobs. In so doing, it has struck at the century-old Chicago tradition of political patronage -- city jobs for campaign workers.

Sorich and his co-defendants, all former officials, are accused of fixing the hiring process in secret to make sure that only those on what City Hall called the "blessed list" got jobs.

In a two-hour closing argument that gradually rose in volume and emotion, Sorich defense counsel Thomas Anthony Durkin scoffed at claims that his client ordered anybody hired. He said Sorich did make hiring recommendations but said they were just that -- recommendations, not orders. Often the purpose was to make sure minorities got their fair share of jobs, he said.

Durkin recalled how in his opening statement he had described the charges against Sorich as "stupid" and "odd."

"Now I'll add another word -- intellectually dishonest," he said.

Durkin ripped into key prosecution witness Donald Tomczak, the former No. 2 man in the water department, who admitted pocketing $400,000 in payoffs from truckers and pleaded guilty to racketeering and tax charges.

Tomczak, a former precinct captain in the Daley family's 11th Ward, testified that he took orders from Sorich on where to send campaign workers and went through Sorich to get the same people on the payroll.

Durkin stressed that unlike Tomczak "Robert never took a dime."

"To suggest that Robert Sorich would in any way behave like that pig Tomczak did sickens me," Durkin said.

Earlier, Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie B. Ruder blasted the defendants, saying they failed provide honest services to the taxpayers.

"The defendants were invested with a public trust, but they did not honor that trust," Ruder said. "They put their faith in another kind of trust. They put their faith in a corrupt clout machine."

She also scornfully dismissed the claim that Sorich acted to promote diversity as "preposterous."

She said the only minority group members who got on the so-called blessed list were seasoned workers in "political armies" that roamed the city on orders from Sorich to get out the vote for Daley on Election Day.

Others were frozen out, Ruder said. She pointed to the case of Laura Miller, an African-American woman with 20 years of experience as a plumber who was beaten out for a job in the sewer department as a drain inspector.

Among those hired as drain inspectors were white male campaign workers. Her voice dripping with sarcasm, Ruder described the system as "affirmative action for the politically powerful" but not for anyone else.

Besides the 42-year-old Sorich, those on trial are former co-workers Timothy McCarthy, 35, John Sullivan, 38, and Patrick Slattery, 42. Sorich, McCarthy and Slattery are charged with mail fraud. Sullivan is charged with making false statements to federal agents.

Closing arguments were to continue Tuesday.

(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)