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Former Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, who boasted loudly that he would take the stand to defend himself against public corruption allegations, whimpered to the advice of counsel when he rested his defense without calling a single witness.
The media was shocked by the turn of events. The public was promised a mega circus that would make Barnum and Bailey blush. The defense witness included the disgraced talkative Blaggo, his wife, White House advisors Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Harry Reid, and a cast of state politicians. The defense only called co-Defendant Robert Blagojevich to the stand as his own attorneys attempted to paint him as a naive, out-of-state bookkeeper for the campaign funds, and not a criminal co-conspirator shaking down people for contributions. Everything had been going quite well until the end of his testimony when the door opened to a harsh cross examination, which included new tapes where Rob told Rod that he should appoint Jarrett to the senate seat in exchange for the Obama administration calling off the federal investigation. Most court observers felt that Robert's credibility was compromised by the cross examination. And maybe the defense counsel feared that the cross examination of Rod would be worse.
So the lawyers attempted to spin the sudden end of the trial. They claimed that they did not need to put on a single witness because the government did not prove its case. This is the exact same statement George Ryan's attorney used when he rested the case without calling the defendant to respond to the charges. Ryan was convicted of corruption.
The trial did mine a few golden nuggets. First, it was apparent that Blaggo did not want to live in Springfield because he would then be available to actually run the executive branch. The tapes and witness accounts showed that Blaggo only worked 2 to 8 hours a week in Chicago . . . and most of that time was spent hiding from staffers who needed him to make a decision or sign papers. The impression is that he was totally out of his element with no intelligence to run a large bureaucratic system. It also showed that Blaggo must have spent most of his time on telephone calls soliciting money in exchange for favors or contributions. One could conclude that when he was elected, Blaggo took the public service nomination as a means for private gain.
It also showed that Blagojevich was a bitter pol, too. His handlers like Rezko and Levine, were also in the circle of state pigs that helped Obama leapfrog the Democratic regulars to the White House. The presidency was something Blaggo wanted when he ran for governor in 2002. He was angry that a no-body, do nothing stick man in Obama took his prize from him. But when you look at the tale of the tape, both men are quite similar. Both never really had a private job, they never ran their own business, they rode the coat tails of political mentors, they have lazy work habits, they are self-dilusional, they steam rolled elections, and had their campaign bundlers corralling huge sums of campaign dollars to blow away the competition.
The biggest sigh of relief came from D.C. where Obama, Emanuel, Jarrett, Burris, and Jackson, Jr. would not be called to testify under oath. Blaggo did not take the stand to throw them under the bus. They were subpoenaed but not called to defend a corrupt fellow Democrat. But even with this silver lining, there is still a dark cloud hovering over them. We do not know what the rest of the Blaggo tapes say; but we know the DC people were highly involved in the senate seat sale. Jackson's supporters said they could raise $6 million for the seat; and Blaggo was leaning toward him in the end because he was going to get something tangible up front. Like many other federal investigations, the Blagojevich trial may not end with this jury's verdict.
skirealnews.com
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