Golden (69 page)

Carrie Hamilton wanted to make one thing very clear.

“Did Blagojevich count on you for legal advice?” she asked.

“No,” Harris told her.

But it seemed clear the governor counted on him for virtually all other aid. Harris was one of a close ring of people Blagojevich felt comfortable calling almost around the clock to bounce his thoughts off. The topic could be anything that popped into the governor's head, from strategy to policy to Blagojevich just wanting to spout off and complain. And Blagojevich was a real talker. The conversations could ramble for an hour or more, with Harris suffering along as Blagojevich spoke in circles about the topic of the moment. It was what Harris was dealing with throughout the fall of 2008, until he was arrested the same December morning as his boss. So many of
the tapes the government planned to introduce in its case would be played for the jury while Harris was on the stand, which he first took June 21, 2010. He was forty-eight and living on the Northwest Side, trying to support a wife and three sons. With government work no longer an option for him, Harris was looking to make a respectable salary by studying to be an electrician on power lines. It was a job that could bring in a good paycheck because not many people had the nerve to try it.

Harris's intelligence and disciplined background were obvious immediately as he started his testimony. He gave sharp answers and barely needed to be led, as he clearly knew what was really being asked of him as he was being questioned. Sitting up straight and focusing on the questioner, Harris didn't seem to wear down as his testimony went on for hours. His hair was trimmed neatly, and he wore glasses, and when he spoke in a slightly nasally voice, he seemed not unlike a straight version of
Simpsons
character Way-lon Smithers, top assistant to the evil and powerful Mr. Burns.

One of his first tasks was to corroborate Tusk's description of what was going on behind the scenes on the Chicago Academy grant and the dispute with Emanuel. He told Hamilton that Tusk had told him about the situation and that Blagojevich had held up the funds. Whatever the “discrepancy” was, Harris said he told the governor, it was going to become problematic on several fronts to continue to hold Emanuel to the fire. The real victim was the school, which was counting on the money and had a torn up parking lot to show for it. Blagojevich relented, Harris said, but would only allow the grant money to trickle out as the school actually received its bills.

Blagojevich's apparent obsession with using his post to make extra money—mostly through his wife, Patti—was apparent early on, Harris said. Blagojevich had come to him asking about positions in the governor's office that could be created just for Patti.

“I told him I didn't think that it was a good idea,” Harris said. As a realist, Harris said it was often his job to throw cold water on the governor's plans. Still, Harris said he felt like he went along with many ideas more than he should have, giving the impression that he was a very smart guy with a very crazy boss who did what he could to keep Blagojevich under control. Sometimes he directed the governor toward ideas that were just slightly off base, hoping to keep him from going down paths that were completely insane or dangerous.

Blagojevich talked about appointing Patti to the Illinois Pollution Control Board, Harris recalled, but that, too, seemed like a bad plan. It was one
of the few appointed posts in the state that had a list of minimum qualifications, which Patti didn't have. But Blagojevich said others had used the board that way in the past; he knew a seat on that board paid more than $100,000. The main problem for the first lady, Harris pointed out, was that the board post wasn't really a spot where one could just float along. There were almost weekly meetings and quite a bit of required reading on fairly complex issues the board would address. It wasn't something Harris said he understood the governor was looking for in terms of a job for Patti. What was he looking for? Hamilton asked.

“Something that paid but didn't require a lot of work or a lot of time,” Harris answered.

The governor already had used Harris to reach out to leaders of Chicago financial firms hoping to get his wife hired somewhere. Patti had obtained what is known as a Series 7 license, allowing her to sell securities. Harris said he reached out to some he knew in the business, including John Rogers at Arial Financial and Ray Kilic at Citibank, where he got Patti a meeting. But it was more bad news. Kilic told the governor's wife that it was a tough business to get into and the picture was bleak. Younger people who had just graduated with MBAs were pouring into the field, and they were willing to work long hours seven days a week to be successful. Again, not what the governor and his wife were looking for, though Harris said the couple seemed to think the meeting meant that Patti should get hired anyway. Their noses were bent out of shape when Kilic didn't call back, though Harris said the Citibank exec just thought he was meeting Patti as a courtesy and answering some questions for her. Kilic received an e-mail from Patti that had given him the impression that Patti was offended, so Harris said he would go to the governor and smooth out the situation.

It came up during a car ride a short time later, Harris recalled, and it was clear Blagojevich's feathers were ruffled.

“He told me to make sure Citibank doesn't get any more state work,” Harris said, and that went for Rogers and Ariel Financial, too. “He didn't think they had done enough to help Patti.”

Hamilton moved to the meat of what Harris would tell the jury by first asking about the tollway funding plans. Blagojevich in 2008 was considering the small, medium, and large funding plans for the tollway, which the governor knew would be a boon for everyone from road builders to laborers and engineers. The road builders cared little about political parties and made donations regularly to anyone in power or anyone who looked like they might
come to power, as Cellini, a Republican, had shown years earlier by hosting a large fundraiser for Blagojevich. “The road builders just want to keep building” is how Harris explained it. So the governor approved the smallest plan on the table, a $1.8 billion option, so they wouldn't be satiated. Everyone involved knew there was a much larger funding option that could be forthcoming, so the governor's requests for cash would have a much better carrot attached to them and the road builders would stay interested in Blagojevich's attempts to push a capital bill past House Speaker Michael Madigan. It was early fall when the small funding plan was approved, but Harris said Blagojevich was keenly aware of the deadline closing in at the end of the year in the form of the ethics bill. He wanted to know how quickly his administration could “get contracts out on the street,” so he could bring in campaign money for them.

At the time Obama won the Iowa Caucuses, Blagojevich hadn't thought it was possible that the former Illinois state legislator had a realistic shot to be elected president. And even by the summer of 2008, Harris had pointed out that when the governor spoke about making a Senate pick, the talk didn't really advance beyond naming himself or using the promise of the appointment to keep Jones in his corner on the ethics bill. The first time Harris said he remembered that changing was on October 6, 2008, when he was in a car with the governor on a ride to Northwestern University for an event. Blagojevich had been pretty blunt.

“So, what do you think I can get for this Senate seat?” Blagojevich asked, with Harris responding by asking if the governor meant, “For you?”

“I said, ‘Well, you can get a new ally or reward an ally. That's what you can get,'” Harris remembered, with Blagojevich saying they would just talk about it later. And later that month, Blagojevich did bring it up again, Harris said. It was in a meeting with his general counsel, William Quinlan, at the Thompson Center. The governor again talked about what he could get for making the pick, brainstorming about getting a wealthy businessman like J. B. Pritzker to make a large donation to a private foundation.

“He was talking about money for his campaign fund or some not-for-profit,” Harris told the jury. “Both Bill Quinlan and I told him, ‘You can't get money for the Senate seat. You shouldn't even consider that as an option.'”

Harris said Quinlan was later even straighter with the governor, telling him flat out that whether he was serious or just joking, he shouldn't even say
things like that out loud. But of course Blagojevich would, having dozens of conversations that federal investigators would capture on tape beginning later that month and into November and December as Blagojevich rambled on and on about strategies for getting something for himself for the seat. Harris said Blagojevich had a very small ring of advisers who gave him ideas on how to go about making a pick in conversations that often devolved into “wargaming” about how he could be rewarded for his choice, particularly by Barack Obama. Meanwhile, the governor's administration gave the public appearance that a very cautious and responsible process was being set up to establish search criteria and weigh possible candidates.

“I will embark on fulfilling my duties under the United States Constitution and Illinois law to appoint [Obama's] replacement,” one talking point prepared by Harris read. “I will follow a thoughtful and deliberative process. It will be orderly and timely.

“I will not turn this into a public spectacle.”

The first call played for the jury with Harris on the stand was one from November 3, 2008, where Harris told the governor about getting the call from Emanuel while he was at the shoe store. He could be heard telling Blagojevich that it was obvious Obama was very interested in who replaced him, a remark that appeared to put a renewed charge in Blagojevich's thoughts about getting something for himself in the arrangement.

“We could get something for that, couldn't we?” Blagojevich said on the tape. He had gone on to talk about maybe being appointed secretary of health and human services under Obama. Hamilton didn't want the jury to miss the obvious point, so she asked if, when Blagojevich said that, he meant he wanted to make sure he got something for himself.

“Yes, it would be for him,” Harris answered. Emanuel had told Blagojevich that Obama cared, opening up some possibilities in Blagojevich's mind. Obama caring meant there was a list of political things Obama could help Illinois with, but there were also things the governor thought he could get just for himself. A cabinet appointment was one thing on the governor's mind. “That was something that was in Barack Obama's power to give if that was something the governor asked for.”

Harris and Blagojevich discussed candidates that could be thrown into the mix to enhance the governor's bargaining position. One of those was
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Blagojevich's defense had suggested Madigan was really the person Blagojevich was going to appoint all along. It would be a political deal with her powerful father designed to break the Springfield logjam, is how the defense suggested it would go. But when it came up on the tape, Harris said Lisa Madigan's name was only meant to be used to make it look like Blagojevich had good political options, thereby boosting the value of the seat and bettering the governor's standing in the pursuit of something that would personally benefit him.

To get Madigan's name out there, Harris agreed the idea that she could be the pick should be leaked to Michael Sneed at the
Sun-Times.
But it was all still hypothetical, Harris said, and designed just to give the Obama camp something to think about going forward.

“He was adding meat to the bones of this concept of pushing Lisa Madigan as a credible alternative,” Harris said. The resulting Sneed item said there had been talks, when really neither side had reached out to the other. “He's beginning to articulate the storyline.”