Golden (80 page)

Blagojevich said he heard from Harris in August 2006 that Tusk was hearing from Emanuel's office about a grant for the Chicago Academy. The congressman's staff was complaining that the school hadn't gotten its money. Blagojevich told the jury he was actually confused and that he thought the original request had been for a different school, and that the money had gone out long before.

“I think I may have asked him or he told me. I think I expressed a little frustration with Bradley Tusk, our deputy governor, and asked is this—was this Bradley recommitting—committing a new grant or acting without my authority to do something along those lines?” Blagojevich said.

At any rate, Blagojevich said he was puzzled, so he asked Harris to look into what was going on. He wasn't putting a stop order on the grant so he could make some kind of shakedown effort, Blagojevich insisted, just making sure he knew the status of whatever grant it was Emanuel's office was asking about.

“My recollection is I asked him, ‘Chicago Academy, that rings a bell,' and then he told me. He described it. It was the former Wright Junior College, which I know a lot because I took the ACT exam there,” Blagojevich remembered. “Twice.”

Still, Blagojevich said he didn't 100 percent know the grant he was being asked about wasn't actually a second grant for the same school. So just to be careful, he told Harris to pay the money out only as Chicago Academy incurred bills. Again—nothing nefarious. It was just an overabundance of
caution, not an attempt to slow drip the money out over the nonexistent fundraiser.

Blagojevich said he didn't remember talking to Tusk at all about the school and its grant, much less telling him to sit on it over Ari Emanuel raising cash for him. He didn't say that to Lon Monk either, Blagojevich told the jury. He had asked John Wyma to ask Rahm Emanuel to ask his brother about a fundraiser when they were in California, Blagojevich said.

“I was out in LA on my own fund-raising issues in the Indo-American community with Bollywood stars,” he said. “I remember that.”

Wyma had known Blagojevich was out there, he said, and asked him to stop by a fundraiser at Ari Emanuel's home that he was throwing for Rahm. It had turned out to be a memorable night. The governor who would one day spend plenty of time on national television was in his element.

“It was a fascinating fundraiser because there was Larry David, the guy who created
Seinfeld
with Seinfeld. I'm a big fan of his
Curb Your Enthusiasm,
and I enjoyed talking to him,” Blagojevich glowed. “We had somebody in common. We hired a speech writer that was a young comic—”

“Objection,” Schar said, finally unable to bite his tongue any longer.

“I knew that was going to happen,” Blagojevich said of the prosecutor. Anyway, meeting David had been a thrill. Not quite like meeting Elvis, he said, milking the moment, but fun. The night and the home were beautiful, and Blagojevich recalled asking Wyma afterward if Ari Emanuel might ever host something like that for him. There was no thought of the Chicago Academy, Blagojevich said. It had just been a good night, and he was curious about whether it could be repeated.

The fall of 2008 had been a busy time trying to fill the Friends of Blagojevich campaign fund. The governor had been reelected two years earlier, but trying to bring in cash was no less important in the middle of the term. The amount of money raised was a reflection of power, and Goldstein asked Blagojevich why he was still interested in fund-raising in the latter stages of that year.

“Well, the realities of politics in America are that if you want to be competitive politically for most offices, you have to have the campaign resources to be able to take your case in the media age to the people, whether it be through television ads, whether it be through radio ads, whether it be through direct mail,” Blagojevich answered.

“Unless you're independently wealthy, this is how our laws are, and there's no accident why something like two-thirds of US senators are millionaires or multimillionaires—”

“Objection again,” said Schar.

Goldstein tried to focus things. How about starting with why it was important as a governor? Blagojevich replied that a big war chest meant independence. He could have courage to take positions that weren't popular with the political establishment if he had a lot of money at his disposal, so he wouldn't have to count on party leadership when it was time to run again. A big fund meant the freedom to lose friends and allies in the name of getting things done for people. No matter what the office was, it meant the ability to fight without worrying when you were leading, he said, winding into yet another campaign speech.

“And so my philosophy was from the very beginning based on my understanding of the history … of previous governors in Illinois, specifically Dan Walker, who took on Mayor Daley's father in the Democratic establishment and then was defeated—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Judge Zagel said, sounding like an exasperated grade school teacher dealing with a kid who just doesn't get it.

“Sorry, Judge,” came the answer, as Blagojevich humbly hunched his shoulders just a bit under the scolding. He would shorten things up. You could afford to make some people unhappy, is what he meant.

He had set deadlines that year, he told the jury. One was the disclosure deadline that would allow the public and the media to see what was in the campaign fund, including at the end of the year. That would let everyone see how politically viable he was. And even more importantly, the end of 2008 would see the ethics bill become law, making it illegal for companies doing business with the state of Illinois from making major campaign donations. That was going to seriously limit what Blagojevich could do in 2009, making the last six months of 2008 even more crucial. Organizations, businesses, and contractors that always had pumped into the Blagojevich campaign coffers were going to be cut off. He told the jury he believed the bill hadn't gone far enough, and he had tried to amendatorily veto the legislation so he could rewrite it and also apply it to state legislators and party leaders. There had been a quiet deal with Emil Jones in the Senate not to override the veto, but Jones had betrayed the deal. That said, Blagojevich told the jury he really did like Emil Jones, bringing yet another objection from Schar.

“That he really likes Emil Jones may stand,” Zagel said.

Jones had called the bill to a vote after taking a call from Obama, who thought the stalled ethics bill in Illinois would be a problem for him on the presidential campaign trail. Negative ads were running in Pennsylvania featuring Blagojevich, and Obama wanted to take the air out of the argument that his home state was still an ethics disaster. Blagojevich argued with Jones about sending the broader bill to the Illinois House and having Obama call Madigan and pressure him to pass it, but Jones had eventually decided just to push through the original bill as it was.

So, despite the defeat, what did that mean for the remainder of 2008?

“That you can still raise money from those businesses, contractors, corporations, whomever legally with unlimited amounts up until the end of the year,” Blagojevich said. It was an important point for the defense, trying to take some of the steam out of the pay-to-play scenario and show what Blagojevich's mindset was and his lack of criminal intent. He knew what the law was in 2008 and said he intended to follow the new law in 2009, like it or not. There was no problem asking men like Krozel and Johnston for fund-raising help prior to then, Blagojevich said. “It was perfectly, absolutely legal, and it was a common practice up until the law would change after the first of the year.”

Johnston's business with the state of Illinois was the recapture bill, which was intended to support horse racing in Illinois and send some casino profits his way. Blagojevich denied shaking Johnston down by not signing the bill until he got a hefty campaign contribution. He had known Johnston and his father for years, Blagojevich said, and had not threatened them. The men were regular contributors who had donated a good deal of money over the years. Blagojevich credited them with widening his network of fundraisers and seemed especially into the fact the father and son had done business with George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees.

The Johnstons had even gotten Steinbrenner to host a fundraiser for him at Yankee Stadium. Patti and his older daughter, Amy, had gotten to go.

“First time I met Donald Trump. He walked in with Regis Philbin and made a contribution at that event,” Blagojevich said proudly.

Anyway, between 2002 and 2008, the Johnstons had probably given him $300,000, Blagojevich guessed, hoping to help place in the jury's mind that the father and son were hardly virginal characters who would have recoiled in horror when asked about making another donation prior to January 1, 2009. They were sophisticated and political, Blagojevich said, recalling how he had hung out with them at dinners and seen them at plenty of events.
What they cared about was the horse industry, and they had given money to Republicans and Democrats alike.

Blagojevich's first attempts to explain recordings in the case came the next morning, Friday, May 27, before he could retreat over the weekend and collect his thoughts. He had a number of excuses for why he had held off on signing the racing bill, with none of them having to do with the Johnstons' unwillingness to give Monk a check for him. One was that Monk kept telling him the money was about to come in, so he didn't want to sign the bill and then have the check appear and have things look bad. The media would have been all over it. Instead, he said, he hoped the money would come and he could wait a while before finally signing. The other reason had to do with “Madigan shenanigans,” he said. Mike Madigan was as crafty as they came, and every bill had to be scrubbed thoroughly for poison pills that the speaker might attach to legislation that everyone thought was agreed upon. That could include adding “something in that might take free transportation away from senior citizens, for example,” Blagojevich told the jury, passing on no opportunities to slip in small reminders of parts of his record that he thought jurors might like.

And Blagojevich also said he had in his mind the call he had with Kelly on Thanksgiving 2008. Kelly had mentioned talking to a friend, former NFL quarterback Bernie Kosar, who lived in Florida and was close to former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Kelly, who had been the administration's earlier link to the Johnstons, had mentioned maybe having Kosar talk to Bush about going to his brother, then the president, about a pardon for Kelly. To Blagojevich, it was possible Kelly was being used to push him to sign the bill and was hoping to get something for himself. Blagojevich tried to explain to the jury how Kelly knew the Johnstons and that Steinbrenner was then living in Tampa. Maybe Steinbrenner would be brought in to talk to Jeb Bush, too, if Kelly could get Blagojevich to sign. Wacky, but the earnest-sounding Blagojevich was really trying to sell it. Quinlan had told him Kelly was interested in the bill, and Blagojevich said he was putting two and two and two and maybe two more together.

“It was a big bold red flag to be very careful with this bill,” Blagojevich said, looking toward prosecutors. “I was very aware that the ladies and gentlemen at that table were investigating me.”

Monk was doing a delicate dance in the fall of 2008. He was being paid very well by the Johnstons to be their lobbyist and use his rare access to push
their agenda with the governor, while at the same time being counted on by Blagojevich to bring in campaign money. When he spoke to the Johnstons, he promised to prod his former boss to sign the legislation they wanted, and when he met with Blagojevich, the focus was on turning around and getting campaign cash from them.

In early December of that year, it was the money-collecting part of Monk's split personality that was captured on federal recordings.

“I wanna go to him without crossing the line and say, give us the fucking money,” Monk had said. It was an episode at the Blagojevich campaign offices that prosecutors said was the two men rehearsing how Monk might go about delivering what they considered an extortion message. It was supposed to be a shakedown, just not sound like one.

As he started to describe his version of what was going on in the meeting, Blagojevich had a look on his face like the answer was clear. One had nothing to do with the other. It didn't seem like something he needed to read into, he said, as he pursed his lips and gave half a shrug. He had always known Monk to be smart and honest and understand where the boundaries were. Both men had done this before and could navigate a gray area.

“I took that literally to mean just that: not cross any lines,” Blagojevich said, as Niewoehner shot Schar a sideways look at the government's table.

And that innocent explanation carried over into follow-up calls on the Johnstons. Blagojevich's excuse centered on the idea that Monk was trustworthy and that he and Johnston knew what they were doing. It was only later when he started to worry that Johnston could feel too much pressure if he got a call from the governor himself. Blagojevich had never called, leaving the play up to Monk, who told Blagojevich he had gotten in John Johnston's face about the contribution. “Good,” Blagojevich had answered.