Golden (64 page)

Robert Blagojevich's lawyer, a veteran Chicago attorney named Michael Ettinger, would address the jury next. He introduced his client as “retired Lieutenant Colonel Robert Blagojevich.”

The government didn't have the evidence to convict him, Ettinger promised. He was an outsider and someone who had shown up in the case only toward the end, promising to come to Chicago to help his brother when he was needed. Robert Blagojevich was no politician. He was a businessman.

“Until they shut me up, he's innocent,” Ettinger bellowed. “He's an innocent man. A great man.”

The Blagojeviches' father was an artillery man in the Yugoslavian army, Ettinger said, and Robert had followed in his footsteps. He had been in the ROTC in college, and that had become his life. He had been successful in the US Army. That was a point Ettinger would try to drill home every chance he could, with two veterans on the jury. He wanted the panel left with the idea that Robert was a public servant and that he had been on the outside looking in when his brother really got down and dirty in the fund-raising arena. Rod Blagojevich was the politician and the professional fundraiser, and Robert Blagojevich was the defender of American freedom who had been in charge of three nuclear warheads while in Europe. He had the same top secret clearance as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Ettinger trumpeted.

“He debriefed sixteen NATO generals,” he said.

As Ettinger wrapped up his opening statement, Adam could be seen rubbing his hands and furrowing his brow. He looked down at the defense table in concentration one moment and smiled at people sitting near him the next. You could almost see him mentally hopping up and down like a prizefighter who can't wait for the bell, and there was a buzz in the room just before he finally stood up. The jury had a feeling, Adam told them as he began. They had heard all kinds of allegations that Blagojevich had demanded money, and it just wasn't true.

“I'm telling you, that man there is as honest as the day is long, and you will know it in your gut,” Adam predicted. There was a way they could tell, he said. Where was the money? Hamilton had just put up a chart showing the heavy financial pressure the Blagojevich family was under.

How well were the schemes working if there was no money for the alleged kingpin?

“This is the biggest public corruption case in the state of Illinois and the country,” Adam shouted. “And what did they tell you? He's broke. He didn't take a dime.”

Scores of federal agents had certainly looked for money in the Blagojevich case, he said. They had pulled no punches and left no stones unturned. “This is the federal government,” Adam said. “The same people chasing bin Laden are chasing him. And how many illegal checks were made out to him? None.”

At the defense table, Blagojevich was suddenly looking more relaxed. He had a look of satisfaction on his face, like he was relieved that his side of things could finally be aired and no one could quiet it. He nodded as Adam promised that Blagojevich would testify himself and explain to the jury what he was really thinking.

“He's not gonna let some four-eyed, chubby, yelling lawyer tell ya,” Adam said.

There had been a plan to sell $10 billion in bonds, Adam said, but Blagojevich had no role in which firm to pick to lead the sale. John Filan had, “a guy who ain't corrupt,” and the plan had saved the state millions.

“Follow the money,” Adam said. “We've got four months here.”

Rezko had taken the kickback from the bond deal and had used it to pay off his own business debts. These things happened under Blagojevich's nose, Adam said, his voice jumping from a near whisper as he stood just before
the jury to a full bellow as he roamed around the courtroom like a gospel preacher. This was what Rezko did, he borrowed—or stole—from Peter to pay Paul. And he did it over and over again.

“Rezko is the Bernie Madoff of Chicago,” Adam yelled. “He had pyramid scheme after pyramid scheme. He fooled everyone. And he fooled—with all due deference, governor—you.”

And with that, Adam pointed toward Blagojevich, who sat with pursed lips like he was humbly accepting Adam's allegation that he had been duped.

Rezko was the real villain in the case, Adam claimed. He had risen from the gritty streets of Chicago and pounded out a living in the cutthroat real estate world and had been just as tough in the political arena. He had pushed for influence where he could, donating money to everyone from Illinois Senator Dick Durbin to President George Bush.

“If I'm in an elevator with him, I'm hiding my purse,” Adam joked. Rezko was good at scheming, getting an award as the area's Arab American businessman of the decade, Adam said, and he had been friendly even with an up-and-coming politician named Barack Obama.

“Obama had no idea that what was happening to Tony was implosion,” Adam said. Rezko's business began to fall like a house of cards once money began to run out and he could no longer afford to pass cash from business entity to business entity to keep things afloat.

He had wagered much of his business on a massive project at Roosevelt and Clark in the South Loop, but his legal problems arose just at the wrong time. Debt piled up in his fast food empire and in his real estate ventures, and instead of being public and facing his issues, Rezko sought to pull his way out of things by borrowing from people he wasn't being honest with.

Adam called the allegations involving Jackson and the Senate seat “upside down” and suggested Blagojevich was only floating the idea of a Jackson appointment because he thought it would help sell Washington power brokers who hated Jackson on the idea of the appointment of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. If Madigan were named to the seat, Blagojevich supposedly theorized, it would placate his main political nemesis in Springfield, powerful House Speaker Michael Madigan, Lisa's father, who was challenging the governor's initiatives at every turn.

The main concern of Obama and other Democratic leaders was that the seat be held in the election of 2010, and it was Washington's opinion that Jackson couldn't do it. Adam said the leadership was asking that someone be sent to them, “just not Jesse Jackson Jr.,” he said. “Lord, please.”

That left some on the jury laughing, and the giggles continued when Adam said he didn't think Jackson would have held up his end of the supposed deal anyway.

“Jesse Jackson Jr. ain't giving anybody no money,” Adam said, as if tapping into some kind of South Side knowledge stream unavailable to most. The entire idea was a clever ploy that worked, he said, because just before Blagojevich's arrest, Emanuel called and said he would fly to Chicago to broker the Madigan arrangement. All the pieces were falling into place for a legal trade, Adam contended, just as the FBI pulled up to the governor's front door.

When Lon Monk walked into the courtroom for the first time to testify, Blagojevich looked up and stared, shooting daggers at the man who had been such a close friend. Monk was now fifty-one years old and had the trim, athletic build of the runner that he was. Blagojevich looked like he had been planning how to react when Monk appeared and decided, as he almost always did, to look like he was ready to fight. Monk simply looked straight ahead at the witness stand, where he was headed. Step by step, passing spectators and the press, he never even glanced at Blagojevich, occasionally looking down at the courtroom's brown and white dotted carpeting. As Monk passed the gallery and the front bench where Patti Blagojevich was sitting, she began staring at the back of his head, joining her husband's glare.

Monk said he was currently unemployed and living in Decatur with his wife. He had gone to law school, he said, had been a sports agent, worked in government, and was a consultant and lobbyist in 2008. Monk appeared very businesslike, in a sharp suit. He had a short haircut and spoke directly and clearly with no noticeable accent of any kind. His appearance suggested he could just as easily have wound up sitting at the government table as a federal prosecutor had the track of his life been different.

He had been approached about cooperating as long ago as 2007, Monk said, but he had refused. It hadn't been until the taping in 2008 had become public that Monk realized he had to try to save himself. He had pleaded guilty to conspiring to solicit a bribe, and in return a possible five-year prison sentence would be reduced to two. He said he understood he wasn't going to be prosecuted for anything else he had done as long as he was truthful in his testimony.

“It's the two years I'm focused on,” he said.

Monk told the jury that when Blagojevich was in Congress in 2000, Monk was in Washington working as an agent when his friend told him he was going to run for Illinois governor in 2002. Monk said he was interested in helping, and Blagojevich put him on his congressional payroll as general counsel before Monk became Blagojevich's campaign manager in the summer of 2001.

Among Monk's duties was to make sure campaign money wasn't spent too quickly, he said.

FBI Agent Daniel Cain had testified before Monk. Cain showed the jury charts of Blagojevich's fund-raising totals rocketing upward during the 2002 and 2006 gubernatorial campaigns, suggesting his machinery for pulling in contributions was in overdrive. They showed how he demolished Vallas, Burris, and Jim Ryan in fund-raising in 2002.

Fund-raising was always a priority in the Blagojevich camp, Monk explained. He said the campaign set goals for “bundlers,” and Monk's job was to call them up to make sure their promises were being met.

When Monk began talking about what bundlers were, Rod dropped his pen almost in disgust, leaned back in his chair, and exhaled deeply. Then he picked the pen up and began taking notes again.

Three or four times a week, key members of the campaign met to hash out fund-raising strategies, Monk said, and Blagojevich would often be there. Niewoehner asked how knowledgeable Blagojevich was about the people and organizations the campaign was targeting for donations.

“Very knowledgeable,” Monk replied.

Among Blagojevich's biggest bundlers were Rezko and Kelly, the roofer from Burr Ridge who wound up on Monk's radar because of his numbers, Monk told the jury. Kelly donated hundreds of thousands of dollars himself, Monk recalled, and just had a knack for getting others to raise money too. When bundlers in the campaign had goals, Kelly knew how to stay on them and demand that they be met. As for Kelly himself, no one even bothered to come up with a mark for him to hit.

“He was involved in so many aspects of fund-raising it just didn't make sense for him to set a goal,” Monk remembered. Prosecutors had put up a photo of Kelly, and Blagojevich looked up at it almost admiringly.

Money was power when it came to politics and campaigning. Blagojevich had realized that cash was key early on in his political life, and Kelly knew how to badger would-be contributors to get it. As a strategist, Monk,
too, knew that having a formidable war chest was a signal to supporters and enemies alike. It would lend weight to a candidate and suggest to the party that he could win, Monk said, thereby leading to even more money coming in. These big dollars in the campaign fund could have a chilling effect on anyone wanting to challenge the candidate. In Blagojevich's first campaign for governor, having a lot of campaign dollars was especially important. Vallas had a lot of support in Chicago, so Blagojevich would need to confront him on the airwaves there. The other part of his campaign strategy was to try to neutralize Vallas's Chicago support by concentrating on downstate voters, and Blagojevich would have to spend his way to name recognition there. And once Blagojevich faced Ryan in the general election, having lots of money allowed him to run political ads sooner and get a jump on his opponent.

The brusque Kelly and the energetic Blagojevich were like-minded and became close, Monk said, and Kelly found his way in to more than just fund-raising meetings. When Blagojevich gathered with advisers to discuss media plans, Kelly was there. And Rezko also wound up more plugged in than might otherwise be expected for someone with no official state title. Once Blagojevich was elected and sworn in to office in January 2003, the two fundraisers constantly made recommendations to fill top posts in the new administration “and in some cases [sat] in on the interviews,” Monk said, and they often submitted their picks for who should be named to dozens of Illinois boards and commissions. Rezko and Kelly traveled with the governor, too, Monk said, taking fund-raising trips with him and bringing their families to Springfield to stay at the governor's mansion on the rare occasions when Blagojevich was there. As chief of staff, Monk said he spoke to the pair regularly, often when they were recommending some company or firm to get a state contract. Monk told the jury he was well aware the pair made their recommendations either to reward campaign contributors or to have the ability to ask for cash. And what did Monk routinely do for them? Niewoehner wanted to know.