Golden (88 page)

“On line 27 you say: ‘I'm gonna begin for the first time to objectively, honestly consider him,'” Schar pointed out.

On the evening of December 4, just before the
Tribune
article about the recordings, Blagojevich had been recorded saying Madigan was out of favor.
One of those calls was with Scofield, when Blagojevich had said he just couldn't pull the trigger on Lisa Madigan.

Just that day, he had spoken to his brother on the phone and told him to reach out to Nayak. It was clear Blagojevich understood what the parameters of a Nayak meeting would entail, because he had told Yang in a call that morning that Jackson supporters had offered “a whole bunch of different things,” including “you know, fund-raising.” Blagojevich knew what Nayak and Rajinder Bedi were about when it pertained to making Jackson a senator. Don't call it bribes, Schar said, repeating Blagojevich, call it illegal fund-raising.

“Never gonna do it,” Blagojevich answered flatly. “Rejected it.”

But when he talked to Yang, Blagojevich had been specific. “You cut a deal,” he had said on the call. He had to believe the Jackson people when they said they offered him fund-raising including something “up front.” In another call with Yang, later the same day, Blagojevich had cleared the matter further. Yang had asked if the deal was that the Jacksons would support him for reelection, and Blagojevich had told him there was more to it. There was “tangible, concrete” stuff from the Jackson group. “You know, specific amounts and everything,” Blagojevich had said. It was clear that Schar was locking him in, and Blagojevich tried some last moves to turn what was coming into a more glancing blow. There was political support, that was part of the arrangement, but when he had said “specific amounts,” that was, in fact, a reference to campaign money.

“And when you say what was offered, again you are referencing here in the afternoon the money that Raghu Nayak, among others, had illegally offered you, correct?” Schar asked.

“That's what I'm telling Fred, yes,” Blagojevich said of the call. Blagojevich had gone on to tell Yang that he realized Jackson wanted the seat desperately and he was the only one to offer things for it. If there was a deal to be made, it was probably with Jackson, despite their past.

And fifteen minutes later, at 2:43 P
M
on December 4, Blagojevich had called his brother again. His brother, Robert, Schar pointed out, was not a pollster and not in contact with the right people in Washington to throw Jackson out there as some kind of lure. Robert Blagojevich's job was to bring in cash, plain and simple. And the governor's direction was for his brother to reach out to Raghu Nayak, the same person who, Blagojevich had agreed, was offering an illegal payment for the Senate seat.

Blagojevich's brother had said that if Jackson were named, he would have to get tapped into African American money centers and bring in even more money. In response to that, Schar said, Blagojevich had not told his brother to forget about that, he had not said he was never, ever going to really appoint Jackson. Instead, Blagojevich had directed his brother to reach out to Nayak. He was to tell Nayak about the history with Jackson and about how Blagojevich had difficulty trusting him. If there was going to be “tangible” support, it had to start happening immediately and not be based on a vague promise. And another thing, Blagojevich had said, be careful, and assume the whole world is listening.

In some contexts that could mean, be careful, and don't get caught.

“Yes,” Blagojevich said, before returning to what he had said before. If you're doing things right, you don't care if everyone knows. Assume the whole world is listening and do it the right way. Do things like everyone can see what you're up to.

Don't do it on the phone, Blagojevich had said. And tell Nayak there was urgency to move forward.

Blagojevich was growing more agitated on the stand, clearly seeing where this was going. Schar was twisting his words, he said. All he meant was that his brother should put the meeting together quickly. He wasn't trying to strike while the iron was still hot, he just wanted his brother to move forward and schedule something with Nayak. And as it turned out, Robert did. He had planned to sit down with Nayak the next day, December 5, to deliver Blagojevich's message.

But it was a meeting that would never occur.

Blagojevich learned that the
Tribune
was publishing its story about Wyma's cooperation and about the federal endgame. In the morning of December 5 it was there. Newspapers all over Chicago with the headline “Feds Taped Blagojevich.”

The governor's next move was to cancel the Nayak meeting. Blagojevich had told the jury he pulled the plug because the story had sent him into crisis mode. He was too busy trying to figure out what was happening to him and how to handle the situation to tell his brother how to handle Nayak, he said, so he had thought better of it. Besides, Blagojevich told Schar, the “negative leverage play” he was imagining with Jackson had grown less important.

OK, said Schar, but Blagojevich's world hadn't crashed down enough to prevent him from going to more fundraisers that weekend or to have a
conversation with Harris about getting street signs put up in the honor of the Chicago Cubs general manager.

“No, that was a higher priority than the Raghu meeting. Yes, the Jim Hendry street signs. I'm a Cubs fan,” Blagojevich said, trying to throw up a joke in a room that was getting very quiet. Blagojevich was rapidly running out of real estate. Schar pointed out that Blagojevich had told Robert why there was to be no meeting. It wasn't because he had public relations work to do.

“In fact, just do it,” cancel it, Schar said. The prosecutor was once again reading what had been captured on tape.

“Go ahead and just call him and say, well, it's too obvious right now because of this story.”

Too obvious.

“Were those your words?” Schar asked, bearing down.

Blagojevich paused.

He seemed to be searching again for something else to say or one more explanation to give. But the silence in the room didn't last for more than a second or two, and Blagojevich was filling the space and giving the only answer he really could.

“Yes,” he said.

“They were my words.”

It's unlikely Abraham Lincoln rolled over in his grave because of Rod Blagojevich, but the man who may be the country's most beloved president is credited with a quote that lands at the heart of the Blagojevich story.

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”

Blagojevich, who had been the state's fortieth governor, was convicted June 27, 2011, of seventeen criminal counts, making him the fourth chief executive of the state to be convicted of felonies since 1973.

The jury found him guilty of wire fraud, attempted extortion, bribery, and conspiracy, deciding he had abused the powers of his office, including attempting to sell a US Senate seat. The sweeping verdict came on top of Blagojevich's earlier single conviction for lying to the FBI. He showed little reaction in court when the verdict was read, first staring forward and then pushing back in his chair with pursed lips. He looked toward his wife, Patti, and whispered, “I love you.”

The second jury was unable to decide if there was enough evidence to convict Blagojevich on the charge that he shook down Rahm Emanuel over the school grant when Emanuel was still in Congress or that he tried to get a campaign contribution from Krozel in exchange for the larger tollway announcement. By and large, jurors found Blagojevich a frustrating specimen: a likable guy but a schemer who crossed lines too easily for his own good and who was buried by overwhelming criminal evidence.

“He's a very personable gentleman,” juror Rosemary Bennett, a grandmother from the Chicago suburbs, told the
Tribune
after the verdict.

But others saw signs of manipulation in Blagojevich's testimony. There were many times he seemed to be tailoring his message for them as individuals, trying to get into their heads. The lone man on the jury had Massachusetts ties, so Blagojevich on the stand mentioned liking Boston. The woman who was the jury's foreman, Connie Wilson, a church choir director, noticed how Blagojevich stressed the Bibles on his bookshelves, seemingly just for her. One worked in a library and one had a restaurant in her family, so Blagojevich talked of how much he liked studying in libraries and how he would go to a Greek diner beforehand.

“He kept rambling on,” juror Kimberly Spaetti told the newspaper. “People were writing ‘blah, blah, blah' in their notebooks, and I drew pictures of my cats.”

Those close to Blagojevich said he felt condemned from the moment he was arrested and that he didn't have a fair day in court. The judge was against him, his lawyers complained, as evidenced by how few tapes the ex-governor was allowed to play in his own defense.

Sam Adam Sr. thought Zagel was egotistical and Fitzgerald had gotten carried away in his investigation. He likened the case to the infamous Chicago Seven trial, when Judge Julius Hoffman had severely limited what the defense could present. That trial had been a show, Adam said, and the convictions in the case overturned. Many tapes Zagel barred would have shown Blagojevich had no criminal intent, Adam believed, and he was hopeful an appeal would be successful. As for Sorosky, who had known Blagojevich longer than anyone on the defense team, the Blagojevich story was simply sad. Blagojevich was fundamentally honest, Sorosky thought, and was caught in a long progression of bad decisions. The governor thought of Rezko as a millionaire who didn't need corruption to make money, so he never thought to watch him closely. And he had surrounded himself with yes-men who didn't have his back. It wasn't unlike how Lyndon B. Johnson was entangled in Vietnam by advisers who journalist David Halberstam dubbed “the best and the brightest.” Aides like Scofield, Wyma, and Greenlee were supposed to be elite minds but had helped Blagojevich find his undoing.

“They weren't his type of people,” Sorosky said.

What the case ultimately demonstrated, though, was that Blagojevich surrounded himself with aides who went along with his erratic and sometimes aggressive behavior even when they disagreed. His power and personality
had marginalized anybody who stood up to him, leaving those who remained in his inner circle with little foresight about where he was taking them and not enough courage to stop him. It had disastrous results for all of them, but especially Blagojevich. At a time when he most needed someone to yell at him that what he was doing was illegal, the warning never came.

He was delusional about his reality then and stayed that way after he was charged. He told one young court observer that Patrick Fitzgerald's claim that he had engaged in a political corruption crime spree “would go the way of weapons of mass destruction” and often predicted his acquittal.

“I can't wait to get my job back,” he told one young man in court one day. “I didn't let you down.”

Well, yes, Blagojevich did, and his place in history is now sealed, as is that of many of the men who were close to one of the most confounding politicians Illinois has ever seen or who found themselves in his orbit, taking the test that power brings.

Nearly six months later, in December 2011, Judge Zagel sentenced Blagojevich to fourteen years in prison following a hearing that felt as if Blagojevich were pleading for mercy from the judicial branch of the same federal government whose legislative branch he had sought to sell out.

The former governor's lawyers argued Blagojevich's crimes—which they finally acknowledged were crimes—were not as serious as prosecutors contended, especially compared to numerous examples across the country of politicians pocketing cash. They asked for a sentence less than the six and a half years George Ryan received in 2006. Even more importantly, they argued, Blagojevich was a good father whose family would be destroyed by a long prison term.

Prosecutors argued the amount Blagojevich tried to bring in through his schemes called for guidelines of thirty years to life. That would be too much, Reid Schar told the judge, asking instead for fifteen to twenty years. It was important to give Blagojevich a stiff sentence to finally communicate to politicians in Chicago and around Illinois that “pay to play” and other forms of corruption that had thrived for too long were not acceptable.

Schar told Zagel that in the government's view, Blagojevich was corrupt when he first took office and was corrupt when the FBI arrested him at his home. He was only interested in himself, putting the needs of the state behind his own. Most shockingly, he had committed the staggering crime of trying to sell a US Senate seat, compromising the government in an extreme way. Practically speaking, Blagojevich left Illinois with just one
vote in the Senate during the fall of 2008, a crucial time when the economy was imploding and votes of national significance were taking place. Citizens' faith in government must be restored.