Golden (83 page)

Blagojevich said his options in 2008 included sending himself or Emil Jones to the Senate, with the idea on Jones being that he would promise only to stay for two years in case Blagojevich ultimately decided he wanted to run. There had been long phone calls with Harris about the possibility of approaching Jones, which Blagojevich explained as keeping an option open and making a political ally feel good about himself. Goldstein asked about Blagojevich telling Harris that either option was better than appointing Jarrett for zilch.

November 4, 2008 was Election Day, and Blagojevich and Harris had continued their discussions first thing in the morning, with Blagojevich catching Harris in a diner having breakfast. Blagojevich had said it was sinking in that he was going to have to make an appointment, and he wanted the
Senate pick to result in something good for the people of Illinois but also good for him. Blagojevich said it was a high bar, and from that day until the morning of his arrest, he struggled with it.

“All these ideas never measured up to that until the very end when I felt the Madigan deal was the good one, and I believe we were close to getting that and me deciding that, but we never quite were allowed to finish,” he said.

Blagojevich then described at some length how he had met with Balanoff and Stern, talking political strategy with them and delivering the idea that he had lots of choices on the seat. The Madigan deal was something he had talked about, as was the idea of appointing someone like Jones. Blagojevich had a strong African American base, and a pick like that would be good for him in Illinois, especially if he did for some reason decide to run for a third term.

In one of Blagojevich's most infamous rants, the one where he had fumed over unbelievably low approval ratings in Illinois—just 13 percent—Blagojevich had basically said screw everyone. He had worked so hard, giving the “fucking baby” of every disapproving Illinoisan health care and getting their grandmother a free ride on a bus. For many journalists covering the trial, it was their favorite quote. Many recalled Blagojevich announcing the programs he was referring to when times were better, and now the quote crystallized the image of the desperate person he had become. “I gave your fucking baby a chance to have health care” isn't exactly headstone material, but Blagojevich battled through it. He told the jury he was just frustrated by the “unrequited love” he had for the state and its people.

With Zagel bearing down on Goldstein and Blagojevich to be more concise and wrap things up, the lawyer began to push the former governor through a veritable highlight reel of quotes from the wiretaps. They were the ones that were likely to be stuck in jurors' heads, and Blagojevich had to answer each one. It was a rapid-fire sequence that would see Blagojevich take in questions and shoot back his prepared answers until late the following afternoon.

He described Hastert as being like a coach he always wanted to impress. With Harris, he was just “wargaming,” and with others, always just talking through options. No matter what jurors heard him discussing about telling Balanoff he would do in exchange for selecting Valerie Jarrett, he
never made up his mind. How could it be an illegal quid pro quo if he never thought in his own mind that he would agree to anything, no matter what the other side offered?

It might sound like he was floating the idea of Lisa Madigan to inflate the price of the seat with Balanoff so he could get what he really wanted for a Jarrett pick, but Blagojevich repeatedly promised that was not the case. The Madigan situation was real, and picking Lisa was a way out of it. And if he had picked Jarrett “unilaterally,” which apparently was Blagojevich's way of saying “with no job or other escape hatch in return,” he was destined to be mired in political gridlock in Illinois for as long as he cared to be governor.

When he told Harris on a call that he wanted to “get the fuck out of Illinois,” it was in light of his issues with Michael Madigan and the idea that he might actually be able to become secretary of health and human services. He just wanted to get something good.

“Something good was still to be determined and defined,” he said. “That was the whole idea of these conversations. These were the discussions. What would be good that would be good?”

On one call, Harris likened the talks with Balanoff to the kind of negotiations one might have when trying to buy a house. One side or the other would start low or high, depending on their position in the bartering. Balanoff had approached Blagojevich, so the two men agreed it should be the Obama side that offered something. Blagojevich's approach had been to describe his political circumstances and throw out some ideas that Balanoff could see might help the governor resolve them. To Blagojevich, it was the beginning of a political bargain. He had asked Harris about having Balanoff and the Obama people set up a private sector job for him, but the conversation had quickly moved to that job having a public purpose. Maybe he could be named to lead the Red Cross or the Salvation Army, so he had directed Harris to look into what kind of salary he might bring in.

For that, Blagojevich said, he was sorry. Not for pursuing the job, mind you, but for having Harris, a state employee, research things like that for him on government time.

Schar half stood and started to object, but instantly thought better of it and said he would go ahead and withdraw it.

“Thank you,” Blagojevich said, looking down from the witness stand. “I'll give you another one in a minute.”

All in all, as he ran through many calls, Blagojevich sounded as if he was prepared to stay on message and deliver cogent points to bolster his
position that there was nothing criminal about what had happened in the fall of 2008. But there was one call that just about everyone was still waiting to hear him address.

It had started on November 5, 2008 at 11:06 A
M.
Doug Scofield was on the line in a conversation that began with the men agreeing on how much they hated journalist Carol Marin. Blagojevich testified that he was sorry about that. He was just kind of flapping his gums with an old friend. He had also joked about becoming UN ambassador and staring down those Russian motherfuckers, after all.

“Now I owe the Russians an apology,” he said, trying to sound sheepish in front of the jury while suppressing a laugh. “I don't know how to do that.”

But then, there was Line 31.

You see, Blagojevich had this thing. It was fucking golden. And he was not just giving it up for fucking nothing.

There was Blagojevich, finally on the witness stand, and a few feet away was the jury with the power to send him out the front door of the courthouse with a verdict of “not guilty.” They could put the case behind him and send the ex-governor on his way. Maybe Blagojevich had gone through this answer fifty-five million times. Maybe he had started to repeat it in his head while he was brushing his teeth and then had finished it out loud in the mirror after spitting into the sink. Maybe he mumbled his answer under his breath while he was running. And maybe when people were talking to him in 2009 and 2010 and part of 2011, he had seemed to space out, because he was thinking about answering this question in front the jury that was watching him now.

Or maybe not.

“Well, that's the—that's the Senate seat. This is that phrase, Ting golden,' that was heard around the world, and I was saying this opportunity is f'ing golden, and—and that's what I was saying, and I don't want to give it up for nothing,” Blagojevich said, seemingly caught off guard. “So we had these discussions.”

Really?

Goldstein tried to recover the moment. When Blagojevich had said on the call that he was not “giving it up for f'ing nothing,” what was he saying there?

“I'm afraid to answer this. I'd like to answer it,” Blagojevich stammered. “I'm not quite sure how to answer it.”

“Answer it the best you can, Rod.” Goldstein said.

“In my mind, I didn't know. I had no idea other than all these different ideas that we were throwing around—” Blagojevich answered.

Blagojevich would have more to say before Reid Schar got his long-awaited crack at Blagojevich, but to the Chicago press corps, the damage already was done. The headlines on news web pages that day and in newspapers the next would be about Blagojevich's failure to hit a home run when confronted with “the Tape.” Blagojevich finished his answer by saying he didn't want to give up the seat without fully talking through all of his ideas. He was trying to figure out what could possibly go into a deal, and even when he had described the chance to make a pick as “golden,” he still hadn't made up his mind in any direction, he explained. That was going to have to suffice, and Goldstein plowed onward.

On November 6, Blagojevich had been on the phone with Harris again. As he had said before, he told the jury he was wargaming what the conversation with Balanoff was going to be, believing Balanoff could be bringing him a direct message from the incoming president. Harris advised Blagojevich to tell the union boss about how scarred he had become slugging things out with Madigan all the time. All of it was intended to create a sense of jeopardy. Blagojevich had much to lose and fairly little to gain—unless Balanoff could come through for him. Lisa Madigan was both a realistic candidate, Blagojevich told the jury, and an alternative he could use when throwing around names of other candidates with Balanoff. Blagojevich saw himself as well-qualified to lead a health-care team to Washington to help Obama, and he and Harris talked of settling into a long, slow, political “Kabuki dance” over some kind of trade.

It was during that call that Harris had thrown out the idea that Blagojevich angle to become the head of an organization like Change to Win, SEIU's political group. It would be a paying job with a national profile, but Blagojevich again said at that point he had no idea of jumping and accepting the proposal even if Balanoff agreed immediately and was able to make it happen. Still, Blagojevich had to deal with what sounded on the tape like him being eager to see Change to Win become a reality. He even daydreamed out loud about Patti taking a job there before him. It was evident on the recordings again and again that Blagojevich wasn't really thrilled about being governor any more. He had been depressed the night of his reelection, he had admitted on the call, feeling like he was being sucked into another four-year deal that he really didn't want. On and on he had rambled about Madigan and about not having enough political allies.

It was also on November 6 that Blagojevich had met with Balanoff the second time, after Balanoff had heard from Obama and been cleared to approach the governor. They met one-on-one at the Thompson Center downtown, out of earshot of the feds who were by then listening to much of what the governor was saying.

“We talked about election night, how magical it was. Talked about Jackie Robinson, Joe Lewis, Barack Obama, the history of it, that was amazing. We then got past that,” Blagojevich said.

“Then we talked about what he talked to me about the night before, two nights before, when he pulled me aside and said Barack called and he's interested in a senator and we want to work with you, something along those lines, he said. And we brought that up. And then he—the question was, he expressed to me it was Valerie Jarrett. I think that's—I knew that was coming, but I think this is the first time he may have told me directly.”

Blagojevich said he told Balanoff that if that's what Obama really wanted, he expected Obama would give him a call to that effect and tell him directly. Balanoff had told him that probably wasn't in the offing.

“He then said, you're a friend of mine, and we've been old friends, something to that effect. Barack's a friend of mine, called him Barack. You know, we're old friends. We were big for him in the election; we were big for you in your election,” Blagojevich said. “I'm here to see if we can work together and sort this out, something along those lines. Not quoting, but words to the effect of that.”

Blagojevich remembered telling Balanoff that if the new president had an opinion about who should be made the new senator, that would carry a great deal of weight. But Blagojevich had his own political realities. He recalled telling his guest about Madigan and that he would have to consider the wishes of someone like Emil Jones, a longtime ally who also wanted the seat. If he sent Jarrett, he'd have an angry Michael Madigan in his life. It seemed like everyone was going to Washington and doing historic things, and Blagojevich was being left behind. Knowing him, Blagojevich testified, he lapsed into a diatribe while Balanoff listened. He said he had told the Obama emissary that his life would be gridlock and impeachment. He had spelled out how he saw the chessboard, and had thrown the scenario into Balanoff's court.

“You guys won't care after I make a senator. You'll all leave me, and I'll be all by myself,” Blagojevich recalled saying. “I love health care, big issue, passionate about health care, that sort of stuff, I'd said. And then I said, let
me ask you something, what do you think of this idea? Any chance I can get Health and Human Services? What do you think?”