Golden (86 page)

Guessing that could be the response, Schar had the segment of the press conference queued up, and it did appear that Blagojevich was staring ahead toward a bank of TV cameras.

Blagojevich asked for more of the conference to be played. He had said other things the jury might want to hear. Could we hear more? Blagojevich asked.

“Why don't we focus on the lie?” Schar answered, before offering to let Blagojevich have the weekend to look at the tape. If there was a part where Blagojevich had not lied and said he actually was interested in taking the seat, he could let everyone know.

Overall, Schar said, moving past the press conference and Blagojevich insisting he needed the full context of what had been said there, Blagojevich's mantra on the seat seemed to be that he would make a pick that was good for Illinois “and good for me.” On, November 4, for example, he had said that to Harris on a call the jury heard.

Right, Blagojevich said.

“I told John Harris that I was going to measure everything up against that, good, bad, ugly things like that,” Blagojevich said. “I said good stuff for the people of Illinois, good for me, it's not coming for free, I'm going to make this decision in good faith. On the morning of November the fourth, that's exactly what I said.”

Schar's point, of course, was that Blagojevich had said the pick wasn't just about the people of the state. It was about him, and that wasn't what Blagojevich twice had sworn to do when he was elected governor.

“Your oath, sir, doesn't say that you can make decisions based on what's good for you, does it?” Schar said.

“The oath says to follow the laws of the state, the Constitution, to faithfully discharge your duties to the people, and I—I interpret that to do good stuff for the people of Illinois and if it's good stuff for the people of Illinois, that would be good for me,” came the answer. “That's what I like about that.”

As long as he was getting good things for the people, he felt like that was good for him, too, Blagojevich said. That was why the Madigan deal looked good, he testified.

Well, back at the press conference, did Blagojevich tell all of those reporters he was going to make a decision that was good for the state and good for himself?

“Can I see the press conference?” Blagojevich said again, clearly needling Schar. “I can answer your question.”

OK, how about the cabinet post? Schar said, playing right along. Had he said during the press conference that he might make a certain Senate pick if it meant he could be appointed secretary of health and human services?

He'd have to see the press conference for himself, Blagojevich said again, but he could say it was highly unlikely he would have said that.

“Highly unlikely,” Schar said, mockingly.

“Highly unlikely,” Blagojevich repeated.

And private foundation jobs, how about that? Schar said. Did he say at the press conference that getting a job leading one would influence his decision on Obama's replacement? Blagojevich said he probably didn't say that, but he hadn't seen the press conference. Round three wasn't over just yet, but Schar was finding a way to put a stop to it.

“You don't think you would have stood up and said, ‘One of the things I'm considering with this Senate seat is private foundation jobs for me.' You think you might have said that?” said Schar in a tone that made it sound like he could really be searching for that answer.

“I don't think so,” Blagojevich admitted.

Schar was circling around the November 4 call with Harris. The governor and his chief of staff had been recorded saying that publicly, the mantra would be what was good for the state, the people of Illinois. They wouldn't be publicly saying it would be what was good for Obama or good for Blagojevich.

Schar was trying to pin that on Blagojevich, who said he would have to see the transcript. It was Harris who had said most of that, Blagojevich remembered, not him. But in any event it was something he basically agreed with, as far as saying that was the public mantra and internalizing it to mean the private mantra also. The prosecutor certainly wasn't going to stop there. If that was the case, could Blagojevich name one time when he had said publicly that the Senate pick was going to be about what was good for him personally?

“You know, I could have said—if I see this press conference, I could have said my commitment to health care, having a senator who believed in my commitment to health care, that was something I was looking for, that would have been good for me,” Blagojevich said, sounding earnest.

Not bad, but Schar had more buttons to press, too. How about having the staff research ambassadorships? When had Blagojevich announced that that was happening? When had he told Illinois that he was having aides find out who past secretaries of Health and Human Services had been?

Did he ever tell the public about Change to Win and that he might make a pick dependent on whether he could get a job like that?

“That lasted a day or two,” Blagojevich answered. “That went nowhere.”

How about that he wanted a salary of $750,000? Did he ever tell the public he might want Obama to remove the president of Families USA and give him that job? Did he tell the public he was attempting to learn how much Patti could make in Washington as a consultant if Blagojevich sent himself to the Senate?

Did he tell the public he was thinking of appointing a placeholder to the Senate who would be willing to give the seat up if Blagojevich ever got in trouble and was going to get impeached?

“Right, the ugly idea,” Blagojevich answered. “No—of course—no.”

Blagojevich would be on the stand for more than another full day, but not until after a three-day weekend. And when he returned, he seemed more comfortable with what was going on and a bit calmer. He had spent time rehashing his first day with a number of his lawyers and advisers, including Sam Adam Sr., who recommended he be much less combative. Schar was trying to draw out the competitive and angrier Blagojevich, to tear away the image he had worked so hard to build up when Goldstein was questioning him. If Blagojevich was abrasive and nasty, it wouldn't be the affable and funny former governor that jurors took in their minds to the deliberating room.

For Schar, it quickly became obvious that his chief goal for the remainder of the testimony was to firm up the ask for the jury. That
was
the crime, since no corrupt deal for the Senate seat ever was consummated before Blagojevich was taken into custody December 9. There could be no ambiguity on whether a message had been delivered that Blagojevich believed was going to the incoming president, Obama. Schar asked whether Blagojevich was telling everyone that during his main meeting with Balanoff, he never “indicated” he was willing to name Jarrett senator in exchange for becoming Obama's secretary of health and human services.

“It's my testimony that I asked Tom Balanoff what he thought of the idea. He didn't think much of it,” Blagojevich said. “And that's what—what the conversation was. I did not tell him I would—I made a decision, I did not promise that I would do it, and I didn't say I would do one in exchange for the other.”

In fact, Blagojevich said, one thing Balanoff had told him was that Blagojevich needed to talk with David Axelrod about the Senate seat.

But Schar's point was that at the time, Blagojevich expected Balanoff was going to take his thought on HHS back to Obama. Blagojevich was trying to paint it as him just asking what Balanoff thought about the possibility of him taking that position, though he acknowledged it had come up in the context of a Jarrett appointment. Blagojevich would only say he thought there was a good possibility Balanoff would be taking the message back. In other words, Balanoff was a feeler from the newly forming administration. Schar wanted to know if Blagojevich had made it clear to Balanoff that he was proposing a trade, and Blagojevich insisted he had never been that explicit.

“I'm not sure what I would've done,” Blagojevich repeated, saying he would have taken the answer and compared it with the Madigan deal or the idea of appointing Emil Jones. Schar was insistent that Madigan was just a stalking horse at that time, but Blagojevich said the reality was all of the options were stalking horses, just “one against the other.” In his mind, even at the time, getting named Obama's new leader of HHS was pretty unrealistic.

“Unrealistic? Sir, you made a career out of taking long shots, haven't you?” Schar pushed, poking some fun at Blagojevich's homespun version of his own life's story from the week before. “You applied to Harvard, right?”

Blagojevich's political career had been marked by victories where he hadn't been favored at the outset. The calls were showing that, long shot or not, the Jarrett-for-HHS trade was something Blagojevich was willing to try, and he had attempted to use Balanoff to take the proposal up the food chain. And if he was not named to the cabinet, Jarrett wasn't going to the Senate either, Schar snapped.

The return message eventually had come from Emanuel through Harris. Obama would be thankful and appreciative if Jarrett were named senator. Things weren't going to escalate from there, and Blagojevich had been angered. He had called the Obama people arrogant and told Harris: “Fuck them.”

“I may have said something like that,” Blagojevich said, dropping his voice a little.

And the calls didn't improve. On November 12, 2008, Blagojevich had a call with Balanoff that was recorded, and he had turned his attention to leading a charitable organization funded by Obama friends. He was hoping it would pay a nice salary and had staffers conducting research on what kind of money he might expect to bring in.

Blagojevich again testified that he never indicated to Balanoff that he had decided to make a trade like that, while Schar said he wanted to take what was or wasn't happening in the governor's mind out of the equation. Had he told Balanoff that he
would
do something like that? Not surprisingly, Blagojevich said he didn't believe he had linked one for the other. On the call itself, Blagojevich could be heard suggesting $20 million could go toward the organization he would lead. If Blagojevich got his millions, couldn't Jarrett be the senator? That seemed to be what was being suggested.

“No, I never—I never told him to go tell Obama or ask Rahm or anybody that I would do that,” Blagojevich insisted, despite being confronted with telling Balanoff that $20 million could go toward his advocacy group overnight, “and then we could help our new senator, Valerie Jarrett.”

As an Illinois politician, Blagojevich often found himself doing favors for other Illinois politicians. That was an obvious truth. And the former governor readily agreed that was the case. The political landscape was about trades, its art was about give and take, and Blagojevich was among its leading practitioners. He had described it as being like a “favor bank.” You do something for someone, and they remember it and help you out in the future when something comes up. It was a human dynamic, Blagojevich told Schar.

But one of the favors he had been asked for in the fall of 2008 was a little unusual, and the government had caught it on the wiretaps. Rahm Emanuel had called, after it was known he would be going to the Obama White House to be chief of staff. It was unclear how long he would be there or whether he might want to return to Congress, so he had asked Blagojevich to appoint someone to his Fifth District seat as a placeholder of sorts. Someone who would be happy to have the spot for a time, who wasn't terribly interested in staying there forever, and who might be thankful for the stint in Washington and then be willing to slide back out of Emanuel's way if that's where he wanted to go back to. Blagojevich had talked with his advisers about whether there was a way to make an appointment since the Constitution called for a special election to be held. Emanuel and people around him thought there could be a loophole, and Blagojevich was taped saying it was a favor “worth doing.”

Emanuel had been to Congress and was taking the biggest job on Obama's new staff. He had been a rising star in politics who had now fully arrived,
and where he might go next was limitless in 2008. Certainly that was the kind of person Blagojevich would remember doing any favor for and would put that favor in the bank for future help. In 2006 or 2007, Blagojevich had helped Emanuel in Illinois on some legislation for ultimate fighting, which Emanuel's brother, Ari, was involved in representing. It had been memorable for more than one reason, Blagojevich told the jury.