Golden (82 page)

The morning of June 1, Blagojevich was ready to dive deeper into the allegations that he had tried to sell the seat and to explain to the jury that he truly believed that even a trade for a cabinet post was legal. Forming the foundation for him was his lifelong study of American history—and particularly presidential politics. Books were filled with examples of US presidents engaging in the kind of horse-trading Blagojevich was talking about, including bartering for appointments and the like.

Blagojevich hoped to walk the jury through his memories of such situations, while prosecutors argued that kind of testimony would only serve to muddy the water for jurors who would be forced to deal with irrelevant
testimony from a rambling Blagojevich. Judge Zagel decided he wanted to hear some of what Blagojevich might say before jurors took their seats, so Goldstein began his questioning with the jury still out of the room.

What followed was a ten-minute summary by a finally unbridled Blagojevich, who threw out the names of more than a dozen historical figures as he tried to explain his thinking.

“When Ronald Reagan was potentially going to challenge President Ford in the Republican primaries for the Republican nomination for president, President Ford offered Ronald Reagan a cabinet position to not run against him. It was the Department of Transportation. Ronald Reagan rejected that. Then President Ford offered him an ambassadorship, the ambassadorship to the Court of St. James, England. Ronald Reagan rejected that,” Blagojevich began.

“And then after Ronald Reagan created an organization called Citizens for Reagan and became even more likely that he was going to challenge the incumbent president, President Ford dispatched his chief of staff at that time, Donald Rumsfeld, to offer future President Reagan a cabinet position in the Department of Commerce.”

In the 1950s, Eisenhower had promised California governor Earl Warren a seat on the US Supreme Court to get him to back the Republican ticket.

“Abraham Lincoln, in order to get the Pennsylvania delegation to back him at the Republican convention at the Wigwam here in Chicago, made a political deal with the governor of Pennsylvania, a guy by the name of Simon Cameron,” Blagojevich went on. “He appointed Simon Cameron to a cabinet position, and it was an important one, the secretary of war, at a time when our country was tearing apart and American boys were killing each over the issues of slavery and the union.”

Never mind that Cameron was notorious for corruption and resigned his post after a year. That ending was left out of Blagojevich's version, as was the quote attributed to Cameron that an honest politician is one who, once he is bought, “will stay bought.”

Even in more recent times, Blagojevich said, political deals are commonplace. He said he believed Hillary Rodham Clinton had abandoned her bid for the presidency in 2008 on the promise that Obama would make a large donation to the Clinton campaign fund and then make her his secretary of state. All of his conversations with his staff and his experiences with politics and history had flavored his actions in 2008, Blagojevich said. That was his state of mind, and all of his recorded conversations were brainstorming,
with the goal being to land in a place that would be good for people and totally legal.

“I mean, they liked the ideas, some of them, they didn't like others, but no one ever said you can't do it, it's illegal,” Blagojevich told the judge. It was all an exploration to come up with the best option in a unique situation.

As far as his personal experience, Blagojevich said he had learned that in Illinois politics, “everything was a deal.” He had sometimes complained to Patti that you couldn't just approach another politician and ask for support for something just on the basis of it being good for people.

Reid Schar was not impressed.

The prosecutor said none of what Blagojevich had said had a place in the trial. His opinion on whether what he was doing was legal or illegal didn't matter, and all of the talk of going over ideas with staffers, including Quinlan, was just another attempt at getting an “advice of counsel” defense through the back door. Allow the jury to hear what Blagojevich had just said, and the trial was headed straight for a morass from which it might never emerge.

Goldstein told Zagel the material was relevant because the case was all about Blagojevich's state of mind, and he should be able to explain how he saw the situation. Blagojevich was listening intently as the lawyers went back and forth, and, not surprisingly, he looked very disappointed when Zagel began to explain that he didn't agree with the defense argument. The jury already should have the general idea that Blagojevich was getting advice beyond what they were hearing on the tapes, and as far as normal political swapping, Zagel said the case the jury was considering didn't exactly match up.
United States v. Blagojevich
was nothing like “you vote for my bill and I'll vote for yours,” Zagel said.

Worse for the ex-governor was the chatter about the creation of a charitable organization he could be employed to lead. What that amounted to was dollars going into his wallet in exchange for Jarrett's appointment, and that was absolutely a crime. Blagojevich shouldn't be allowed to wander into the world of what wasn't on tape, Zagel said, because it was too vague. What he was being asked to do was allow Blagojevich to say that just because no one specifically told him what he was doing was illegal, he should be justified in thinking it was not a crime. And to what end? That just wasn't the law, and Zagel said it wasn't going to fly in the remainder of the trial.

Additionally, Blagojevich had been taped numerous times saying he knew one thing could not be swapped for the other, so part of the argument
went out the window. He could argue one thing
wasn't
in exchange for the other but not climb under the blanket that he thought everything he was doing was fine.

“Not honest belief that it was legal,” Zagel said. “His belief was, quite clearly, at least as expressed on the tape, that one for the other was illegal. He is not claiming that he thought that that was OK.”

What Blagojevich would say if he told the jury he acted in good faith would be to acknowledge the swapping, Zagel said. That was contradictory anyway to Blagojevich's contention that he never traded one thing for the other.

“So what the defense wants to do, as I understand it, is put him in a position where he can say even if it is one for the other, I still acted in good faith, which I don't think he can say,” Zagel finally tried to explain. “What he could say is, or what he wants to say is, one for the other is legal. But the problem with that is, he's got that instruction which says he doesn't have to know it's legal. So the fact that what he thinks is legal or illegal—or the fact that he thinks it's legal, maybe the fact that he thinks it's illegal is not so good for him, but the fact that he thinks it is legal is not relevant here.”

That left many in the courtroom scratching their heads, but the bottom line was that much of what Blagojevich wanted to say, the jury was not going to hear. Blagojevich could say he thought he could do what he had done because he did not think he was trading one thing for the other, but he wasn't going to be able to say he thought it was legal. What Blagojevich wanted to do might work on the street, Zagel said, but not in the arena they were working in now.

“Did you ever decide what you wanted to do with regard to the Senate seat?” Goldstein asked when the jury finally returned. “No, I never got there,” Blagojevich said.

But in his effort to try, Blagojevich denied ever threatening anyone, demanding anything, or otherwise shaking anyone down over it. Limited to what Zagel had allowed, Goldstein asked whether Blagojevich had taken part in all of his discussions on a Senate pick in good faith. Yes, Blagojevich answered, he had.

Many of his talks had taken place at his home, at a phone near a chair in his “little library” in the front portion of his home on the North Side.
Goldstein showed him photos of it, and then the jurors saw them on a screen in the courtroom. The room was comfortable and warm and smelled of old books, Blagojevich said, just the way he liked.

“There's my bust of Winston Churchill, do you see it?” Blagojevich asked as the jury looked up at the screen. “Blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

Churchill had uttered that phrase to the House of Commons as World War II was beginning. Blagojevich didn't tell the jury that, but he might as well have. If the jury hadn't figured out Blagojevich's love of history yet, they were continuously being bludgeoned over the head with it.

“Charles Dickens, a collection of Charles Dickens, there's Shakespeare, and some American authors like Hawthorne and others. There's different ones,” Blagojevich said. “There's some philosophy books. I have a few Bibles in there. There's books on religion. There's a real good book called
God's Politics
—is he going to do that?”

Schar was standing to object as Blagojevich seemed poised to ramble through his entire collection. He had managed to slip in the Bibles before Schar protested. “I'll withdraw that,” Blagojevich said on his own, half joking.

“Rod, did you read all those books?” Goldstein asked.

“I'm under oath, right?” Blagojevich continued. “No, but I have to say, I actually read, you know, a pretty good number of them, for better or for worse.”

In one photo were the phone and the chair where Blagojevich had sat as he had many of his Senate discussions. There was one talk with Rahm Emanuel and another with former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, he wanted the jury to know. There were conversations with Greenlee and many, many conversations with Quinlan. Again, Blagojevich ran up to the line of what Zagel would allow, telling the jury he averaged three calls a day with his chief counsel and sometimes spoke to him five times a day.

To hear Blagojevich say it, Quinlan was nearly his very own Jiminy Cricket, in his pocket at all times. Constantly, continuously, repeatedly, repetitively, Blagojevich said, he was speaking to Quinlan. Before and after and during all of the taping. They had talked about Obama's interest and whether that could be leveraged into billions in federal money for Illinois, and that idea had colored the way he viewed the Senate pick going forward. But a few moments later, when Blagojevich wanted to describe how things that Quinlan had said influenced him, Zagel sustained repeated objections.

At the time, there were to be two parallel streams regarding the pick. One would be the public perception of a process of considering candidates,
and another would be the internal machinations. They mirrored each other, Blagojevich said, because he was determined to go slow and be deliberate with his unique opportunity to send someone to Congress with the wave of his hand. The best way to go about it was to throw out every available idea and sift through them, Blagojevich said yet again.

Yes, some of his ideas seemed ridiculous, Blagojevich admitted, but he was just dumping out thoughts unfiltered. He didn't want the jury to think he was being overly serious at the time.

“Although a former governor previously, Adlai Stevenson, was actually a UN ambassador—”

Schar was objecting again.

Blagojevich stopped, and Goldstein asked him whether any decision had been made on the seat. Of course not, was the answer, but Blagojevich was about to hit on yet another theme. Even if Obama had offered any of the posts Blagojevich was dreaming up, Blagojevich still hadn't decided he absolutely would trade. All of it was exploratory, and any actual choice at that stage would have been premature. He was sucking intent out of the equation everywhere he could. He tried to paint everything as happening in slow motion and to give the impression that he had circled the wagons to discuss his options. For example, Balanoff and Stern reached out to him even before Obama was actually elected, not the other way around. He wasn't going to actually seek anything officially until he thought he knew what he wanted to do, period.