Golden (72 page)

“What do you mean, wait?” Wyma repeated to the jury what the governor asked. Ten days?

As ridiculous as that was, Wyma said he left the meeting with the hospital and the fund-raising from Magoon on his to-do list. But he did nothing. He said it was way too uncomfortable for him to directly approach a client who had a pending state action and ask for money. Robert Blagojevich called the next day and left a voicemail that prosecutors played for the jury next. The governor's brother teased Wyma a little bit by saying he was calling to make sure Wyma would get his job done.

Whatever. Wyma said he had no intention of following up with Magoon, because the message the hospital official was going to take away from the
effort was that “the fund-raising ask” was going to be tied to the state reimbursement.

“I thought they would feel pressure,” Wyma testified, using language that was similar to how he had described what happened when Tusk had tried to get him in the middle of the school grant for Emanuel. “I was increasingly alarmed by the level of aggressiveness the fund-raising had taken on.”

So, Wyma said, he withdrew from fund-raising altogether. He already had the subpoena on Provena Health to deal with. And when he went to see the FBI about it on October 13, Wyma decided to fill agents in on what was going on at the campaign, he told the jury. He was uncomfortable and decided he wasn't going to be dragged into a larger problem. He told the FBI about the fund-raising push and gave them the voicemail that Robert Blagojevich left him about going forward with pushing Magoon to fundraise for the governor. With a meeting coming up at the Friends of Blagojevich on October 22, investigators wanted Wyma to attend, and they had asked him to wear a wire and capture the conversation that would unfold there. But Wyma had refused. He told the jury he just didn't feel comfortable becoming a tool of the government. When he received the subpoena, he said he felt a duty of sorts to tell the truth about what was going on, including in the two meetings he had just been to.

“I didn't feel I had a responsibility to go out and proactively record,” Wyma explained from the stand.

Still, Wyma had been helpful enough to propel the endgame for the feds. With his refusal, they had simply gone around him, taking the information he provided about fund-raising that crossed the line into extortion to a federal judge to get permission to place the recording devices in two rooms at the Friends of Blagojevich. Wyma said even though he wouldn't wear a hidden microphone, investigators pushed him to go to the meeting as planned.

“They didn't want the investigation to be impeded or disrupted,” he said, telling the jury that he did attend. Lon Monk, the governor, and the governor's brother were there discussing which of them would be the best one to approach Magoon for cash. Rod didn't want to explicitly mix government and fund-raising, Wyma said, and ultimately Robert was chosen to “make the ask.”

Prosecutors next moved Wyma to discussions about the Senate seat swap that fall. Wyma had continued acting as if nothing unusual were going on with him, while reporting to federal authorities on his contacts with the Blagojevich administration. His friend Rahm Emanuel called him in
November 2008 about the Senate pick, he told the jury, asking him to be a messenger on his behalf with Blagojevich. Emanuel had a fairly simple message for the governor.

“He expressed to me the presidentelect wanted Valerie Jarrett in the Senate and asked if I could relay that message” to Blagojevich, Wyma said. The rest of the communication was that Obama would “value and appreciate it.” Wyma agreed to relay the information and tried to reach the governor first, he told the jury. When he wasn't able to, he connected with John Harris to deliver the message. Wyma said he told Harris it made sense to him to listen to what Emanuel was saying. If growing his relationship with Obama, who was riding into office on a wave of popular support, was something that was part of the governor's “decision matrix,” Wyma said he told Harris, “it would make sense to have Valerie as the pick.”

But Wyma recalled that Harris had an answer for that. “His decision matrix and my decision matrix were not the same as the governor's,” Wyma testified that Harris told him. Regardless, Harris said he would deliver the message unedited and unabridged. There was no promise for when there would be an answer, but Wyma testified that he had expected someone would be getting back to Emanuel in fairly short order. Instead, Wyma again found himself as a conduit for negotiations between Blagojevich and the team that would soon occupy the White House. Lobbyist Doug Scofield, in his unofficial role as an adviser to Blagojevich, called Wyma back.

“He said he was calling on behalf of the governor,” Wyma testified. He thought that was odd enough, since he typically just talked to Blagojevich directly and didn't need a go-between. Scofield told him the pick was still open, Wyma recalled, and that the Blagojevich camp “wanted to get into Rahm's head” the notion of a nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing health-care issues nationwide. Wyma said it sounded to him like Blagojevich was essentially asking for a job, and Scofield had answered that that was basically right.

“He said, ‘Yes, Rod would be interested in being executive director of this,'” Wyma told the jury. The plan was to plant that seed while at the same time make it not look like one thing was linked to the other. Blagojevich thought Emanuel and people close to Obama would have the ability to have people raise money for such an organization, was the thinking, Wyma said, but it didn't make much sense to him to expect to talk about Obama's wishes for the Senate seat and then throw in an “oh by the way” about Blagojevich's desires to be paid to head a charitable organization
funded by the new president's friends. “Very transparent” is how Wyma described it for the jury. So he decided to ask Scofield how he would have such a conversation, in which Blagojevich's job request and the Senate pick would be brought up in nearly the same breath. Scofield's idea was to try to front it, Wyma recalled.

“He suggested I say upfront this has nothing to do with the Senate seat,” Wyma said. So in other words, make it look like an honest request on a different topic when essentially the opposite was true. Wyma was supposed to state there was no connection but say that when the governor got out of office he would want such an organization set up that Emanuel and others could find money for.

Hamilton asked Wyma what he took away from that suggestion.

“That was the most artful way you could express a really bad idea,” Wyma answered, saying he ultimately decided not to be the one to deliver it.

Cross-examining Wyma was Sorosky, who tottered forward from the defense table in one of his extra long ties. Things started amicably enough. The lawyer wanted to know if he could call Wyma by his first name, John.

“Do you mind if I call you Shelly?” Wyma answered, sending a signal that he wasn't going to be lulled by Sorosky's goofy charm.

So Sorosky started to walk Wyma through his background. He had been Blagojevich's chief of staff in Congress, and he had left on good terms. He had gone on to work for Senator Chuck Schumer, who Sorosky called “the distinguished New York senator,” drawing an objection from Hamilton, who sounded like she was out of patience just minutes into the questioning. Sorosky said he didn't think the senator would mind being called that.

“No,” Judge Zagel answered. “But Senator Schumer is not in this courtroom.”

As always when the judge rebuked him, Sorosky, like Adam before, moved on like he hadn't even heard it. And the objections kept coming, such as when Sorosky asked Wyma whether Rod Blagojevich was his “political godfather in Illinois” and whether “the best person you knew in Illinois happened to be the governor.” Zagel tried to give Sorosky another chance to formulate a proper version of the question, but Sorosky came right back and asked if Blagojevich was “the person you knew best in Illinois.”

“If that was the question, I should have sustained the objection,” Zagel said as people in the full courtroom gallery chuckled.

Sorosky nevertheless seemed to be moving toward a point. One of Wyma's many clients was Provena Health, and he said he was paid $10,000
a month to help them navigate the choppy political waters of Illinois and assist them in getting a certificate of need from the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board that would allow the hospital group to build a cardiac center. Sorosky wanted to know what role Rezko had played in helping that approval and whether Wyma had spoken to Michael Malek, a member of the IHFPB whom Rezko had placed there. There was just enough to it that Zagel asked the jury to leave the room momentarily so he could ask Sorosky where he was going with the line of questioning.

With the jury gone, Sorosky said Wyma's subsequent actions amounted to a bribe. He expected Wyma to say that he had helped set up a backroom meeting between Malek and Provena, where Malek worked as a physician. Zagel told the defense lawyer he could ask about it, but without the explosive language accusing Wyma, who already had told the jury he was testifying under a grant of immunity, of something specifically illegal. Once the jury returned, Sorosky asked if Rezko had communicated something about Malek and Provena.

“He told me Dr. Malek had issues [with Provena] and he would appreciate it if I would hear Dr. Malek out,” Wyma said. There were essentially three issues, he said. Malek wanted to be paid more, wanted to do spinal work, and wanted a dispute over labor act violations ended. Malek and Provena met, and Provena wound up getting its certificate of need, but, Wyma said, he could only get credit for arranging the talks, and nothing more. He hadn't negotiated anything, he told Sorosky, and the topic was dropped after Wyma acknowledged again that the subpoena over Provena had helped lead him to cooperate, suggesting maybe there was more to it.

In fact, Rezko had told authorities that he had told Wyma that the price of the Provena approval would be that the hospital make good with Malek and donate $25,000 to the Blagojevich campaign. A $25,000 contribution had been made just weeks later, a fact that was available in public records and that the
Tribune
had even reported in its article that ran on the Wyma subpoena just after his meeting at Blagojevich's campaign office October 22, 2008. But neither side asked about it, as both wanted a degree of separation from Rezko, leaving the jury with just the version Wyma gave.

The last witness prosecutors would call was Magoon, the Children's Memorial Hospital CEO, to tell what the play had looked like from his side of
things. Magoon said the facility lost $20 million caring for children through Illinois Medicaid in 2007, so increasing the state reimbursement rate had been a priority in 2008. After Dusty Baker was good enough to call Blagojevich on the hospital's behalf, Magoon said Blagojevich spoke to him and promised a rate change that would mean around $10 million more per year. It was a big relief to Magoon, who said he asked whether there was anything he could do to be of assistance. Blagojevich just said that the increase wouldn't go into effect until the following January 1, so he asked Magoon not to make anything public before then.

“He suggested we continue to work with his staff,” Magoon said. “But he wanted absolutely no attention drawn to the fact the decision had been made.”

Blagojevich didn't explain why, but things became clearer to Magoon just days later. Robert Blagojevich left him a message at work. When they finally connected, Magoon was asked for money.

“He had asked if I would be willing to raise $25,000 for the governor from my business associates and board members, and he asked if I would do that by the end of the year,” Magoon told the jury.

Magoon said he told Robert Blagojevich that he didn't think he should be getting a call like that at work, but feeling like he was walking on eggshells with the promised reimbursement rate change, he told Robert that the governor had been very supportive on a number of issues that were important to the hospital and he would have to think about the request.

Magoon said he was left with no doubt about what was going on. He had been asked to keep quiet about the reimbursement decision until January, which had been coupled with a fund-raising request for the same timeframe. And Magoon said he was aware of the changing ethics law that also just happened to coincide with the same date. Without promising to increase the rate publicly, Blagojevich wasn't really on the hook to do it at all.

“It caused me great concern,” said Magoon, telling the jury he was most worried that Blagojevich would just change his mind about doing more to help the hospital. “On the one hand I felt threatened and I felt at risk and I felt a little angry.”

Instead of contacting his associates and friends about pulling money together for Blagojevich, Magoon said he contacted the hospital's attorney and told his staff to record any further phone calls from Robert Blagojevich.