Golden (66 page)

Early in the tape, Monk told Blagojevich he was headed to Oklahoma for his dad's “army reunion.” That wasn't actually true, as what Monk was planning to do was go play golf with some pals. He just didn't want the governor to know that, he said, because Blagojevich had previously flipped out on him when he took golf trips late in the year when fund-raising was critical.

The ploy was to make it sound like the signing of the bill and the donation weren't related, even though they were, but there could be a perception problem if the governor signed the bill helping the horse tracks and suddenly a donation appeared on the books. Johnston should be told to make a donation right then, the men agreed, and he could be assured that the signing would come in short order.

“Look, I want to go to him without crossing the line and say, ‘Give us the fucking money,'” Monk said on the tape. “‘Give us the money, and one has nothing to do with the other, but give us the fuckin' money.'”

It was all preparation for the conversation that Monk would shortly have with Johnston, he testified. Eventually it was decided that Monk would say Blagojevich was concerned that Johnston would get “skittish” about the donation if Blagojevich signed the bill, as the feds had recorded. Make the donation now, Johnston would be told. Blagojevich was going to sign a large group of bills together within weeks, so it would look better if a donation came in soon and the horse track bill were signed with the other bundle later.

Niewoehner wanted to make the point crystal clear for the jury. Was Monk actually telling Johnston that the two were not linked? No, Monk answered, they were confident Johnston would read between the lines and figure it out.

“I wouldn't have to say that if they weren't linked,” Monk said.

A few days later, Johnston himself would tell the jury about the conversation he had with Monk. Johnston had wispy, sandy-colored hair and the somewhat weathered look of a man who had spent his share of time outside around horses. Companies associated with his family had given the governor hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years, though they hadn't donated anything in 2007 while the governor was using most of his incoming campaign dollars to pay lawyers defending him from the ongoing federal probe. Johnston had hired Monk that spring to be a liaison to the governor's office, but it seemed like Monk often turned around and asked for money on Blagojevich's behalf. He remembered the racetrack bill had passed in November 2008 and was sent to the governor's desk for a signature. Johnston called on a regular basis to see if Blagojevich would sign it, he said, because he was losing money daily. He remembered the December 3, 2008, meeting, saying he figured Monk might have some news about the bill but would also ask for more campaign cash. To deflect the request, Johnston said he had his dad, Billy, come to the meeting, calling him an
“ornery SOB” who had rattled Monk's cage in the past. And it worked, until Monk got John Johnston in the stairwell alone.

“He turned to me and he said, ‘One more thing. The governor is concerned if he signed the bill, you might not be forthcoming with a contribution,'” Johnston recalled. “I said, ‘I thought that's what the governor might be thinking.' I said, ‘Your suggestion of a contribution at this time is inappropriate.'”

But Monk wasn't deterred. “He said, ‘OK, different subject matter. I need you to get a contribution in by the end of the year.'”

Johnston said he knew his donation was tied to the bill's signing, and he felt some pressure, even though he knew he would never be writing a check. He was angry, he testified, and it would just look wrong. Besides, Monk was supposed to be his lobbyist. “My lobbyist,” he said with a wry smile. “I showed him the door, and I never spoke to him again,” Johnston said. “And I never wrote the check.”

Blagojevich was arrested days later, and he signed the horse track bill December 15—nearly a week after his arrest.

Adam Jr. started slowly when he finally got to cross-examine Monk, seemingly channeling the anger of his client behind him. Monk had accused Blagojevich of plotting to divide up the state of Illinois.

Monk had to have known the penalty would be severe if they were ever caught. And speaking of being caught, they would have had to be very careful. That would mean at the very least knowing what the corrupt deals were that they were going to do so they could work to cover them up, right?

“Yeah,” Monk acknowledged almost sheepishly.

“And you can't remember the first one?” Adam said, raising his voice in mock exasperation.

“They were just ideas,” Monk answered.

“And you can't tell us the first one?” Adam said again.

“I don't remember,” Monk said. Adam was doing a good job of using Monk's lack of memory of the details of the meetings to make the whole thing sound preposterous. Monk tried to make it sound like the corrupt ideas were in such an embryonic state that they didn't make any difference to him at the time. It was more like a corruption brainstorming session to him. He made it sound like Rezko was kind of talking off the top of his head
while he and Blagojevich sat there and nodded. But Adam kept at it, pointing out that Monk didn't even know where all the money was supposed to go.

“There wasn't any specificity,” Monk insisted again. “They were concepts and ideas.”

Adam asked him to name the second item on Rezko's list. Then the third. And when Adam asked if the governor did anything to make items on the board come to fruition, Niewoehner objected.

When the prosecutor had questioned him, Monk said he thought maybe the pension-obligation bond deal was on the list, but Adam circled back to poke holes in that, too. Monk had said the meeting between the four was in late summer, even September. But Adam told him the POB deal was completed in June 2003, trying for a Perry Mason moment. You could tell from the expression on Monk's face that he realized what Adam was getting at as he was asking.

“It couldn't have been one of those ideas, could it?” Adam said loudly. The deal was over by the time of the supposed meeting.

“But it could have been on the board,” Monk insisted.

“Was it?” Adam said angrily.

“I don't remember.”

Adam received essentially the same answer regarding a supposed second meeting at a Los Angeles hotel that Monk had talked about. Monk couldn't remember the details. Rezko was at a board, Kelly was often piping up with thoughts, and there was a buffet this time. But Monk still couldn't recall any of the plans on the list. Monk didn't know where the money was going to be held, and, as it turned out, he never got a dime from the ideas anyway.

But, reminded Adam, Monk did say he got some money from Rezko. Not in the form of dividends from state corruption but money in the form of good old-fashioned cash stuffed into envelopes. Adam suggested maybe it was hush money. Word went out that spring of 2004 that the feds were turning up the heat. Levine had been visited by the FBI, and they had played Levine tapes of himself talking to players in the scheming, including Rezko. Was it a coincidence? Adam asked, as the former governor at the table nearby, for once, stopped taking notes and seemed to relax as he leaned back in his chair to watch.

“The only cash in this entire scenario you're aware of is the cash Rezko gave you,” Adam said as if it were the definitive statement on the matter.

Monk was facing ten years or more in prison, and a person seemingly would say just about anything to avoid that. And for Monk, Adam said
often, that meant saying what the prosecutors wanted to hear. Monk said he had to tell the truth, but wasn't it really that he had to tell the government's version of the truth?

Adam wanted the jury to know he thought that assertion applied to the last subject area he wanted to get to, the Children's Memorial Hospital deal. Monk had testified about a meeting at the campaign office in 2008, when Blagojevich had heard from his brother that Pat Magoon of CMH wasn't paying up in return for the governor agreeing to boost the facility's state payback. Blagojevich had supposedly gotten mad almost instantly and got on the phone with a secretary demanding to talk to Bob Greenlee and telling the deputy governor to either hold up the plan or slow it down.

But Adam had notes of a conversation Monk had with the government where his version of events had been different. He had said Wyma was at the meeting, and it was Wyma who had set Blagojevich off. And furthermore, the campaign office was bugged and its phones were tapped, and no one ever had played that call for Monk during his cooperation. The jury wouldn't be hearing it either, because the government didn't have it. Adam threw that in Monk's face as yet another challenge on whether Monk was just making things up.

“You've never heard that phone call, have you? Because it doesn't exist,” Adam said, raising his voice again. “It doesn't exist, does it?”

An uncomfortable-looking Monk shrugged and tried to say he didn't know for sure, as Adam moved toward him. Niewoehner later had Monk say he didn't know which line the governor pressed or whether the conversation had happened in a part of the office where the microphones weren't really picking things up. But for right then, Adam demanded to know what Monk was trying to get the jury to believe.

“You're putting it on his back, aren't you, Mr. Greenlee?” Adam said, muffing the kill shot. But in typical fashion, he shook his head and half laughed and corrected it. “Mr. Monk, sorry.”

The defense later came to believe that Adam's cross of Monk was a turning point in the first trial. Zagel kept a much tighter leash on them from there forward, and particularly on Adam Jr. It was as if the judge had wanted to see how far the Adams might take things and, having found out, was not about to let it continue. As the defense tried to bore in on future witnesses, even about some topics they believed the government had gotten into, Zagel told them to call the witness back themselves if they wanted a thorough exploration. The defense often chafed, thinking it was a ridiculous
interpretation of the law to block them from aggressively cross-examining witnesses.

Joseph Aramanda had the look of a successful if somewhat world-beaten businessman when he took the stand about a week into the trial. He had met Rezko in 1996, and they became close friends. Their families had traveled together to places like Italy and Dubai. In fact, Rezko had been on a trip to the Middle East with Aramanda at the time he was indicted in 2006, making authorities wonder whether he would return to face the charges. Aramanda had been an executive in Rezko's businesses, serving as chief operating officer for the more than one hundred Papa John's pizza franchises that Rezko owned, until he bought a collection of the restaurants from him. Rezko had offered him spots in the Blagojevich administration, Aramanda said, but he turned down a post in the Department of Aging to pay attention to the pizza business in 2003. Things weren't going well, Aramanda recalled, and it made more sense for him to try to save his struggling franchises than to take on something new in government. That same year, Aramanda said, he went to Rezko looking for someone to loan him money to help prop things up.

As it turned out, Aramanda said his friend had someone in mind. It was Robert Kjellander, and Rezko set up a meeting. Aramanda had spoken to the political insider before, including at a fundraiser at Rezko's home for Blagojevich and Barack Obama. And after just one discussion, Aramanda remembered Kjellander agreeing to loan him $600,000. He hadn't been that interested in what the money was being used for, Aramanda said of his creditor, and he didn't really ask for any paperwork or collateral. The money would go a long way toward helping Aramanda settle some debts and keep things afloat, and he had hoped to spend perhaps half of the money to build a new restaurant that might generate some better income.

But just days after Aramanda signed for the loan and got his money, there was a bit of a nasty surprise. Rezko suddenly brought up that Aramanda owed him more than $400,000 from their own transaction involving Aramanda buying some of the pizza restaurants. So Rezko wanted Aramanda to use much of the money to pay some of Rezko's own outstanding debts. Aramanda protested, but Rezko said he didn't have anywhere else to go at the moment, so asking for the favor had been unavoidable.