Golden (70 page)

It was clear from the tapes that to Blagojevich, the options he was throwing around were absolutely real. The incoming president of the United States would surely deal with him and give him something significant in exchange for Blagojevich nominating Valerie Jarrett or another Obama pick to the Senate. It was just about playing his cards right, Blagojevich thought. The call from Emanuel to Harris was a trigger of sorts. It let Blagojevich know that Obama really cared about who would replace him, though the situation seemed to have been greatly exaggerated in the mind of the governor. Before the call, Blagojevich thought either about appointing himself or about what he could do with the pick to help himself in the state, such as appointing Emil Jones to defeat the ethics bill. But after the call, his thinking expanded. Now he imagined a golden parachute that could secure his future after he left office. Obama cared, and Blagojevich thought that meant he had a great deal of currency. He would spend weeks strategizing about how to use the situation for his own benefit.

The jury heard a recording of the November 5 call between Blagojevich and Harris. The governor started by asking, “How do we play this?” The administration was planning a press conference in a few hours to talk about how the search for Obama's replacement would be conducted. Blagojevich's
question and Harris's actions with the governor in the fall of 2008 would become central to the case against Harris. It wasn't hard to see why Harris had been charged. In a number of instances he went beyond just telling the governor yes to every wild fantasy and scheme and sounded much more like a coconspirator helping the governor plan the next move in Blagojevich's perceived chess match with the Obama circle. Harris thought of it as doing his job, advising his boss on something he cared about. But to prosecutors it was aiding and abetting a politician who had crossed the line into the criminal realm.

The jury listened as Blagojevich asked what he should do next about Balanoff. He already had met with him and Andy Stern once and then had a chance encounter with him at Obama's victory rally in Grant Park, after Balanoff had gotten a call from Obama. And the union boss had told the governor the same thing Harris had gotten from Emanuel. Obama was interested in seeing Jarrett named to the seat.

Balanoff was called to the stand to tell the jury how he had gotten that message from the presidentelect himself.

His union was involved in the Obama campaign, providing manpower mostly in Northern Indiana, because Illinois was seen as an obvious lock. Early in the fall of 2008, Balanoff's own preference for the Senate seat was US Representative Jan Schakowsky, a union ally. But he later had a conversation with the union's national leader, Andy Stern, who said he had spoken with Valerie Jarrett, and she was interested in the position. Stern wanted a meeting with Blagojevich about the pick, so Balanoff used their political consultant, Doug Scofield, to set it up. It was the day before the election, November 3, 2008, when they got their first audience with the governor. They met him at the Thompson Center, and Balanoff recalled starting out the conversation by talking up Schakowsky. The names of a number of possible candidates were tossed around, including US Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., though no one thought that was a particularly good idea. Lisa Madigan's name was in the air, too, with Blagojevich saying it would be a smart political decision that could help him move his legislative agenda. As for Jarrett, Blagojevich just listened, Balanoff said.

The governor thought he would hear from President Obama directly if Jarrett was his desire, but as it turned out, that wasn't going to happen. Obama was going to make his preference known, but Blagojevich wasn't going to get any kind of direct phone call. Balanoff was at dinner that night
when his cell phone rang. He looked down and saw “unknown” on the screen, so he didn't pick it up.

“Tom, this is Barack, give me a call,” a waiting message said. But Balanoff testified that he didn't have the number. A short time later, though, while Balanoff was pumping gas at a station at Congress and Dearborn, Obama called again. They exchanged greetings, and Balanoff remembered saying, “We're going to bring Indiana home.”

That would depend on turnout, Obama said, but that wasn't what he was calling about. Obama knew Balanoff was in contact with Blagojevich about the Senate seat and wanted to pass on his own preference. Obama told Balanoff he had two criteria, the union leader remembered. One was that the pick be good for the people of the state, and the second was that the person would be strong enough to be reelected when the seat came back open for a vote two years later, in the fall of 2010. Several people filled the bill, Obama said, telling Balanoff he had decided not to support anyone publicly. As for Valerie Jarrett, Obama said he really wanted her in the White House even though she had expressed interest in the Senate seat. Balanoff took it as another signal he could go ahead and make it known that Obama would support the naming of his friend to the seat. Even though Obama wanted his friend in the White House, he appeared to be fine with her name being tossed around for the Senate seat.

Doug Scofield was among the witnesses to describe how Blagojevich's past and his vision of that future merged. Scofield remembered how incredibly jealous Blagojevich was of Obama and how he thought the new president had taken the path he had hoped to walk himself. Scofield had dealt with the governor and his instabilities for years and was there to hold his hand at the end as he tried to find someone for the Senate seat and plotted to use a pick to brighten his prospects. Blagojevich had an “in and out view of world,” Scofield said, meaning he often perceived that you were either for him or against him, and there was no in between. It led to many people walking on eggshells around the governor and telling him what they thought he wanted to hear. It was normally an annoying situation, but it became dangerous for Blagojevich when there was no one to talk him away from some of his ideas in 2008.

Describing exactly how bad Blagojevich's finances were was the job of IRS agent Shari Schindler, who testified that by August 2008, the governor and his wife had piled up some $90,000 in credit card debt and were down $220,000 on a home-equity loan. Everyone knew the governor really liked his suits, but Schindler's testimony suggested his years in office were one long spending spree. Schindler had taken apart the family's financial picture and showed where all of the governor's cash was going. He had spent about $400,000 on clothes while leading the state, including more than half of that figure at Oxxford. One day alone in December 2006, Blagojevich had dropped $20,000 there.

The testimony wasn't doing much for Blagojevich's image, and it shed new light on his taped complaints about poverty in 2008. There was a month Schindler reviewed when Blagojevich spent $12,000 on clothes and just $81 on toys for his girls.

And Blagojevich didn't seem to have a great handle on his campaign finances either, though just enough to get himself into trouble. Prosectors called Agent Murphy to the stand to talk about his interview with the governor at Blagojevich's lawyer's office in March 2005. It was the meeting when Blagojevich claimed to have a firewall between himself and specific knowledge of who was donating how much money to his campaign.

Prosecutors hoped to erode that claim by bringing Kelly Glynn back to the stand. She had last appeared at the Rezko trial, discussing how Friends of Blagojevich tracked incoming money and how cash was credited to certain contributors. It just wasn't true that Blagojevich didn't know what was going on, she said. Right from the time he was inaugurated in 2003, he was always in the fund-raising meetings, even when individual contributors were discussed. What she described sounded a lot like what was on tape in the case, with Blagojevich holding meetings where he was intimately involved in knowing how specific people would be approached, what they could be asked for, and what the results would be.

“We would be going through a list of people who had made commitments or not made commitments,” Glynn testified, and Blagojevich was right there. He was happy when he got good news about cash coming in and mad when people stiffed him. He always wanted to know what person X or Y had donated or failed to give. Glynn said there were certain people who were approached, promised something, and never delivered. The campaign office called them “repeat offenders,” and Blagojevich would react strongly
when their names came up in his fund-raising meetings. Blair Hull was one whose name got Blagojevich riled up, Glynn said.

“That's what the governor would chime out with: ‘Bullshitter!'” she yelled. It was a little too specific a memory and sounded a little too much like Blagojevich to be dismissed as just an overeager witness doing the government's bidding.

After Jerry Krozel was called to testify and described his dealings with Blagojevich in 2008, including how he felt he was being pressured to come up with money for the governor if he wanted to see the larger tollway expansion project announced, prosecutors called Rajinder Bedi to the witness stand.

He testified in a thick accent, wearing a Sikh turban, and told the jury he had taken a job as editor of the
Indian Reporter and World News
in Chicago and that he was still doing consulting on trade matters after leaving his state economic development post. Bedi described himself as very close to Raghu Nayak, who had made the cash offer over the Jackson appointment. The two attended the 2008 Democratic National Convention together and were so close, in fact, that they had committed tax fraud together. Nayak issued large checks to a company Bedi was running, and Bedi gave him cash in return that Nayak could pocket. Bedi knew Nayak to be a fundraiser for both Blagojevich and Jackson and said he had seen the politicians together at a fundraiser at India House in May 2008, where they talked about one of Jackson's favorite pet projects, the proposed third Chicago airport at Peotone.

The October 31 fundraiser at India House was intended to support a Jackson Jr. bid for the Senate, and just days before it, Bedi said he was at a breakfast meeting with both the congressman and Nayak. But just as Bedi was about to describe what had happened there, Zagel asked the jury to leave the room and wanted to hear from Niewoehner how things would be described. And from the sound of it, it was no good for Jesse Jackson Jr., whose excuses about the meeting would later include that he never heard what Nayak and Bedi were talking about even while they sat at the same table.

The conversation over breakfast had also included talk about Peotone but then swung to Jackson wanting to be the senator, Niewoehner told Zagel.

“Nayak says to Jackson in Bedi's presence, ‘I will raise a million if he appoints you to the Senate seat,'” Niewoehner said. That conversation had led Bedi to tell Robert Blagojevich the same day that Nayak would fundraise and wanted Jackson to be appointed.

The judge decided the jury should hear a softer version of that account and brought the panel back into the room to let Bedi finish up. He told the jury there had been talk about both fund-raising and the Senate at his meeting with Jackson and Nayak and that he told Robert that Nayak was close to Jackson and was “very interested” in seeing him appointed.

“I mentioned Raghu Nayak can raise a lot of money,” Bedi said, but Robert answered that he didn't think his brother's relationship with Jackson was nearly good enough to get that idea off the ground.