Golden (48 page)

Blagojevich had appeared at a second meeting with the FBI while being represented by Winston & Strawn, not long before his reelection in 2006. But when investigators asked to see him again in late October 2008, Sorosky told them Blagojevich would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights. The attorney didn't know it then, but the request was an apparent attempt to lock Blagojevich into statements that would contradict what agents were hearing on their recordings.

With the investigation all around him, Blagojevich was unlikely to be in the state's political mix beyond 2010. And longtime nemesis House Speaker Michael Madigan had called for a committee to begin studying impeachment. The newspaper editorial boards were also starting to think it was a good idea, casting Blagojevich in an increasingly negative light. An end to his political career would leave him with almost no options to continue giving his family the kind of life they had enjoyed. Money was going to be a problem after he left office, and Blagojevich didn't have the kind of reputation that sometimes led to high-paying jobs for ex-politicians. He was damaged goods. No law firm would pay to put his name on the door, using him as a trophy. No major corporation would want him as its figurehead. And no one was going to pay to see him on the lecture circuit. In short, he needed an escape hatch.

And he would find one, at just the wrong time. The recipe crystallized just as the feds flipped the switch on their recordings. In Blagojevich's delusional mind, the one good thing about Obama's election was that it left him with the ability to choose the presidentelect's replacement in the Senate, and he was determined to try to maximize it for his own benefit. It was a final trump card that he could play to end many of his problems at once. Get him money and a job prospect after he left office. End the threat of
impeachment. He could even pull the rip cord on a golden parachute and name himself. Get him out of Illinois. Get him to Washington.

The final ingredient in the explosive cocktail came from the incoming president. As was his prerogative, Obama also had thoughts about who might replace him. He wanted someone he knew and could work with, and someone who could hold the seat for the Democrats and maintain the balance of power in Washington that he was enjoying at the beginning of his first term. So Obama had reached out through intermediaries to communicate his wishes at the same time Blagojevich was turning things over in his mind and imagining what his best strategy would be. With Obama invested in the pick, Blagojevich thought he had all but won the lottery. All of his enemies—Madigan, the newspapers, and even the feds—Blagojevich dreamed, were about to see that he could still outsmart them all.

The morning after the wiretapping began, Blagojevich was at home on Sunnyside Avenue, talking with his newest deputy governor, a young analyst named Robert Greenlee, who was part Blagojevich sounding board and part toady. He had been promoted months earlier and quickly earned the governor's trust. It was October 30, and the presidential election was just days away. There were polls circulating on Obama and his opponent, John McCain, on everything from the economy, to who was most ready for the job, to who would do a better job on national security issues. Blagojevich, the Democrat, felt Republicans would do a better job keeping the nation safe.

“Don't get me wrong, the second time I voted for Clinton, the first time I voted for Bush senior. If you ever repeat this, Greenlee, first I'll deny it, secondly I'll wait a little bit, then I'll fire you. I'll give it a month or something, and then we'll come up with some charges, and you'll be out,” Blagojevich said.

Greenlee laughed. By the way, he said, the
Washington Post
had a story on the Senate seat. Lots of names were in the air. Jesse Jackson Jr., Tammy Duckworth, Jan Schakowsky, Valerie Jarrett, Emil Jones. At least Jackson and Jones were African Americans and congressmen, and either would give Blagojevich a political boost in the black community. Maybe even Bobby Rush, another US representative, could be tossed into the mix, Greenlee said.

“Black Panther,” answered Blagojevich. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, he told Greenlee, maybe the election was tightening up some. Maybe
Obama could still lose. Blagojevich sounded hopeful describing the issues that might still produce a McCain win. Patti had her own criteria in deciding which man would get her vote, Blagojevich said.

“Who's more likely to fire Pat Fitzgerald,” the US attorney in Chicago, Blagojevich told Greenlee. “That's who she's voting for.”

“Probably go with Obama,” Greenlee said.

Later the same morning, an early call was captured between Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris. It was an intelligence call of the type the men had on a regular basis. The governor and his top staffer would often bounce off each other things they had seen in the media and ideas they had for strategy. Harris was a former army intelligence officer and judge advocate general who had risen through the ranks of city government under Mayor Richard Daley to become his budget director. He had worked in Daley's campaign and held big jobs in the Department of Aviation and the Chicago Police Department. He joined the governor in 2005 and often discovered he had the task of reeling his boss in from each particular day's bizarro idea, so much so that Blagojevich often called him the Prince of Darkness. But on this day, it was just idle chatter about the election and anything else that might come up. What did Harris know? Blagojevich asked.

The presidential race shouldn't even be as close as it seemed to be, the men agreed. With the housing market crashing and some of the frustrations of the Bush White House, there should have been a more sweeping push for change. Blagojevich sounded resigned to an Obama win but still somewhat hopeful he could trip at the finish line.

Agents listening to Robert Blagojevich's cell phone recorded a call between Robert and the governor's general counsel, lawyer William Quinlan. On October 30, Quinlan was reviewing a newly released indictment against Bill Cellini and trolled through it looking for links to Blagojevich. Robert was most interested in mentions of Illinois road builders, since it was a group the Blagojeviches were pressing for campaign cash. The builders and the tollway were mentioned in the document, but not in any way that should have an impact on what they were doing. “None of it says Rod had anything to do with it,” Quinlan said.

And there were calls about fundraisers past and future. Rod called once to report State Senator Jimmy DeLeo had raised $50,000. “Fucking A,” Robert answered. And there was a return call from Bedi, discussing a fundraiser in the Indian community for the next day, which was Halloween. A number of guests were expected, said Bedi, hoping to show he
was doing what he could to bring out a crowd. Something like thirty people were headed for the India House restaurant in Schaumburg, a northwest suburb. Nayak was one of the hosts.

“And, uh, each one has allocated about five to six people,” Bedi reported. “And Rod knows about all of them because, uh, each one of them has done a fundraiser for him.”

The next morning, news that Bill Cellini had been indicted in the Operation Board Games investigation for his role in an attempted extortion at TRS was in both papers, and Blagojevich was reacting early. The FBI tracked calls from his home as he spoke to his press agent, Lucio Guerrero, about how the coverage had turned out. The
Sun-Times
had used a dramatic “Shakedown” headline and Blagojevich's picture. Cellini had been accused in the attempt to get a finder's fee or a Blagojevich campaign donation from movie producer Tom Rosenberg in order for his firm to get investment money from the Teachers' Retirement System, which had been part of the Rezko case as well. Having it back in the papers, along with photos of him, was making Blagojevich uncomfortable. In a call with Greenlee that morning, Blagojevich insisted no one had done anything on his behalf. He sometimes claimed he had only a vague idea of what TRS even was. Cellini had been recorded saying Rosenberg meant nothing to “the big guy,” meaning Blagojevich, and signaling that Blagojevich apparently knew what was going on.

“I don't believe that's true either,” Blagojevich told Greenlee. “Nobody ever talked to me about him.”

Blagojevich was due at India House around midday, so he had plenty of time that morning to digest the Cellini coverage. One call was with DeLeo, who was sympathetic, not surprisingly.
Tribune
columnist John Kass had put DeLeo himself in a column about Cellini that day. DeLeo had read both papers, and the men agreed it sounded like Rezko was probably helping the government. DeLeo said he knew that Cellini's health was OK, though he had dealt with cancer, and he and Blagojevich agreed he might actually have a shot at beating the case.

“I'm trying to figure out how they could bring a charge like that against him when that was a ‘not guilty' at trial on Tony, and then Tony's talking to them. That's my read,” Blagojevich said, noting that one count Rezko hadn't been convicted on was the Rosenberg charge.

“Well they weren't going to indict him, and then after Tony started talking to ‘em now they have somebody saying here's a tape that he says this,
and now they got Tony sayin' well yeah he was there and he was, you know, layin' out the blueprint how to do it,” DeLeo answered.

It was true that Rezko had used Cellini for his knowledge of how to use the state system, DeLeo went on, remembering how he had told Cellini to stay away from Rezko. There was nothing Rezko could do for him at the stage of life the older and established Cellini was in, DeLeo recalled saying.

“Yeah, I had that conversation with ‘em years ago,” he said. “But, ya know, he just liked the art of politics.”

At the heart of the matter was the spat between Rosenberg and Stuart Levine. “North Shore Jew competitiveness” had developed when Rosenberg was trying to sell a company, DeLeo explained.

“And, ya know, a friend of mine once told me he said that uh, Jews have been chased out of every country in the world,” DeLeo said, laughing. “They're just terrible people whether they're Highland Park North Shore Jews or, or from Israel or wherever part of the world they're from.”

Ironically, DeLeo had just spoken to Rahm Emanuel, one of the city's most powerful Jewish politicians. Still a congressman but headed to the Obama White House, Emanuel wanted to know if Rod would listen to him about appointing someone to replace Obama in the US Senate. It was the first time the government had caught any kind of message coming back to Blagojevich about the wishes of anyone in Obama's circle. And it didn't go over very well.

“What a fuckin' piece of shit,” Blagojevich barked to DeLeo. He still blamed Emanuel for campaign ads that year run by the Democratic Congressional Campagin Committee. The ads aimed to boost Democratic state senator Debbie Halvorson by pointing out donations by Republican Marty Ozinga to Blagojevich. “He's got a right to do that, but he wants me to listen to him on his Senate appointment?”

Blagojevich was supposed to be in Schaumburg in an hour, but he finished jogging and got on a call with Harris. He had a development to talk to him about. Tom Balanoff and Andy Stern of the Service Employees International Union wanted to come see him the following Monday and Tuesday, which was Election Day, presumably about the Senate seat. That was fine, but Blagojevich and Harris wanted to have a long talk first. They needed to strategize about what they would say publicly about the supposed process to name a new senator.

“We're not giving up on McCain though, right?” Blagojevich slipped in.

There was already momentum in the African American community to consider Obama's Senate seat a black position, the men agreed. Harris
likened the situation to his time in the Daley administration, when the job of police superintendent was considered by some to be a “black spot.” Still, Daley had broken that mold when he named Phil Cline, who was white, to replace Terry Hillard, who was black.

“What [Daley] does is he tries to put a black somewhere else then, so like he puts a black in charge of the fire department,” Harris said. The men were only half serious, but the thought that whoever replaced Obama should be African American came to be a regular theme for Blagojevich.

Right then, however, Blagojevich was still fixated on the Cellini coverage and how the case was being linked to him. Though he was upset the
Sun-Times
had used his photo, he conceded he actually liked how he looked.

“I actually like the picture,” he said, urging Harris to agree he looked handsome. “The picture's more important than the article.”

After the Indian fundraiser was over, Blagojevich and Harris would talk again, ruminating on which politicians might support which possible picks for the Senate and whether Obama would have a preference. If he did, it would be good to know exactly who that was early in the process, they agreed. Maybe they should ask David Axelrod, who had become Obama's top adviser, if they have a horse in the race, Harris said.