Golden (40 page)

Springfield was burning. And instead of fiddling, Blagojevich was fund-raising and hanging out at his house. He was showing up at work maybe two to eight hours a week. When he did show, he sometimes hid in the bathroom to avoid meetings or making tough decisions. With Obama running for president, living Blagojevich's own dream, he was depressed. One bright spot he had was the Cubs, who were on their way to the playoffs both in 2007 and 2008.

Since becoming governor, Blagojevich had indulged his boyhood fantasy of being a baseball player by doing the next-best thing: hanging out with the players, coaches, and manager of his favorite team. He befriended Dusty Baker, who was managing the team when Blagojevich was first elected, and attended players' charity events. One night, at such an event, Blagojevich introduced himself to Dave Kaplan, the host of a popular sports program on the Cubs radio station, WGN. Kaplan quickly realized Blagojevich knew something about baseball and invited the governor to cohost a radio show with him and his partner at the time, Tom Waddle, a former Chicago Bears wide receiver. “Absolutely! I'd love it,” Blagojevich responded. Kaplan suggested he could sit in for thirty minutes of the two-hour show. “Oh no. I want to do the whole two hours!”

A Blagojevich scheduler soon settled on a date but on the afternoon of the show called Kaplan with disappointing news. The governor was going to have to cancel. Something important had come up. Kaplan said that was too bad because he had arranged for Dusty Baker to call in. Thirty seconds later, the scheduler called back: “He's in. The full two hours.”

Baker was replaced by Lou Piniella, whom Blagojevich also got to know. Blagojevich and Baker kept in touch. The governor also became friendly with Cubs General Manager Jim Hendry, going so far as to dedicate a street in his hometown in his honor. As the state melted down but the Cubs won, Blagojevich watched dozens of games at Wrigley Field or at home. After tough losses, he would call Kaplan and others to talk Cubs baseball. “Why did Lou bring in Remlinger there?” he said once, complaining about a pitching change. During much of 2008, Blagojevich constantly harassed his
communications director, Lucio Guerrero, to get him on ESPN's national radio morning show,
Mike & Mike,
to talk about the Cubs.

Even when games weren't being played, Blagojevich was hanging out at Wrigley. Having suffered a leg injury while running, he routinely showed up at the ballpark in the morning and asked Cubs trainers to work on him and help him heal. They obliged.

The players would joke to broadcasters who covered the games, “The governor was here again today.”

A long line of people ran down a hallway on the twelfth floor of the Dirksen US Courthouse on March 6, 2008, waiting to see if they could get a seat in the courtroom where Tony Rezko's trial would be held.

Many were surprised the trial was happening at all. Most thought Rezko was too smart to ever be caught in a federal net, and others had figured the last thing he would do was stick around for a trial. When prosecutors had been ready to have a grand jury indict him, Rezko was on a long trip to the Middle East, and his return date was uncertain. They finally unsealed the papers against him while he was still overseas, hoping it would coax him to return to face the charges. Fears that he had engineered an escape from his legal troubles by burying cash in the sand in Syria were soon proven to be unfounded, however, as Rezko returned to the United States and his plane was met by FBI agents at O'Hare International Airport.

Rezko posted bond, but investigators remained unsure of his true intentions. They watched his finances closely and eventually moved to have him taken into custody again just weeks before his trial was to begin. They found that he had brought into the country $3.5 million from Iraqi-born billionaire Nadhmi Auchi, who had business links to Rezko, and believed he had concealed it. That was enough for Schar, Niewoehner, and Hamilton, who would take the Rezko case into court. The last thing prosecutors wanted to do was prepare for a lengthy corruption trial striking at the heart of the Blagojevich administration, only to have Rezko skip out on them just as
he was to sit in front of a jury. Rezko was held in solitary confinement at Chicago's Metropolitan Correctional Center downtown, a highrise federal jail in the Loop. Those who ran the facility said it was for Rezko's own security, while some around him wondered if it wasn't a final attempt to crack the stubborn Rezko and get him to tell authorities what he knew about Blagojevich.

Whether that was or wasn't the intent, it didn't work, and Chicago was soon braced for its biggest public corruption trial since George Ryan had been convicted two years earlier.

Right away, prosecutors sought to put an approachable face on their case and turn the head-spinning detail of investment contracts into something that made sense to normal people. They chose Hamilton, who had come up through the office handling child exploitation cases, to give the opening statement and remind the jury what part of the case was really all about. Every day, thousands of public school teachers go to work instructing the children of Illinois. And while they're concentrating on their jobs, other people were supposed to take care of their retirement money by trying to find safe places to invest it and help it grow. Likewise, there's a state panel that is supposed to make decisions about where health facilities should go in Illinois, looking at how to make sure patients get the best care. They are supposed to think about where it's appropriate to have a hospital or clinic and how big it should be. They, too, should not be basing decisions on whether they or someone allied with them should be able to make money off a project to build a health facility. Both systems are based on a foundation of public trust, Hamilton went on, her voice sharp with indignation. It wasn't supposed to be about whose pockets got lined.

Tony Rezko had worked with an insider to corrupt both of those organizations. So instead of decisions with the right aims, decisions at TRS and the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board had been made with the best interests of Rezko and his insider in mind. Rezko was one of Blagojevich's top fundraisers, she explained to the jury, dropping the name of the governor early and often, and after he was elected, Rezko was given access to the very highest levels of power in the administration. When it came time to fill hundreds of vacancies on boards and commissions after the election, Rezko was one of the trusted few who was in meetings putting forward names of those he believed should be appointed. Rezko would give a name, Hamilton said, and “more often than not” that person found themselves on a state board. Hamilton showed the jury a diagram of the hospital planning board,
with the five members of Rezko's voting bloc able to carry any vote on any proposal that came before the panel. And she explained how the group was able to push the plan for Mercy through, even as stunned onlookers watched the insider, Stuart Levine, whispering into the ears of other members of the panel to swing the vote. That plan had been approved just because Levine and Rezko had agreed to split a bribe.

“Rezko was the man behind the curtain, pulling the strings,” Hamilton said. “Stuart Levine was out in front.”

Hearing the allegations spelled out in such clear detail for the first time did little to rattle Rezko. He sat at the defense table with his chin resting in his hand, looking as calm as someone waiting for the second act of a boring play.

Rezko's lawyer was one of Chicago's most affable, Joe Duffy, a gentlemanly attorney with friends all over the Dirksen US Courthouse. A former IRS agent and federal prosecutor, Duffy had broad experience and the kind of personality that would make anyone want to share a beer with him. His friendly and witty demeanor did much to hide his considerable legal skill. Juries loved him, and even prosecutors liked him—even while he was quietly figuring out ways to eat their lunch. At the IRS he had worked on the prosecutions of politicians for income tax fraud. And all the while he was attending nighttime law classes, emerging as a hungry young attorney. He landed at the US attorney's office, where he rose to its number-two spot. And in private practice he had done well, defending cases as varied as fraud in Chicago's yen trading pit and the prosecution of a man accused of diverting charity funds to Muslim extremists. In other words, if anyone could figure out a way to get Rezko out of trouble, it might be Duffy.

Right off the bat, he made the case all about Stuart Levine. It was Levine who was out to scam Edward Hospital and Levine who repeatedly sold his clout, both real and imagined. Duffy knew that very little was recorded linking Levine to Rezko, so he tried to interject doubt about just how much a man like Rezko would pay attention to Levine.

Levine was a Republican, and by 2003, when Edward was making its proposal, the Republicans were out of power in Illinois. That left him with only one choice, Duffy said; he had to lie about having a connection to a Blagojevich power broker to convince Edward to go along with him. The hospital's Pam Davis had gone to the FBI, and the shakedown attempt was recorded. Rezko had nothing to do with it.

“It was a lie by Stuart Levine that he had a corrupt relationship with Mr. Rezko,” Duffy said. It was Levine who had asked his old friend Vrdolyak to
set up a meeting with Rosenberg, even before Rosenberg had his problems getting investment funds from TRS. In fact, Levine had cheated his way through everything he had ever done. Levine had even made a bad buck while handling the estate of Ted Tannenbaum, the second cousin of his mother.

“You'll see Stuart Levine hasn't worked an honest day of labor in the last twenty-five years,” Duffy said.

The government's first group of witnesses was meant to quickly demonstrate the kind of power Rezko had in the administration and how he got it. Kelly Glynn, a thirty-four-year-old former finance director for the Blagojevich campaign, was called first. She told the jury that Lon Monk was Blagojevich's campaign manager in 2002 and that Rezko was a top “bundler,” meaning a fundraiser who could find other donors and pool their contributions. Glynn had moved on to New York since the 2002 campaign, she said, working in finance for the committee overseeing Democratic senatorial campaigns. But she still recalled the events of that campaign and how money was raised. One event was hosted by Bill Cellini at a Wyndham Hotel in the suburbs, Glynn said, but it hadn't gone on the books as a fundraiser for the Democrat Blagojevich hosted by the Republican Cellini. Instead, the event for state road builders was listed as being hosted by Rezko, Glynn said. Chris Kelly had told the staffers to list it that way.

She remembered a number of meetings at Rezko's office, where staffers talked about targeting top fundraisers and meeting money goals. And after the election, Monk helped host a party at Rezko's Wilmette mansion for campaign leaders.

That was all well and good, but no one really doubted that Rezko was an important figure in the Blagojevich administration. What was important was what he had done with his influence. And to prove that Rezko had breached what was allowable, there was really only one witness.