The Hill: Governor Arrested in "Political Corruption Crime Spree"

The News

Feds: Blagojevich arrested in ‘crime spree’
By Reid Wilson
Posted: 12/09/08 02:31 PM [ET]
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) and his chief of staff were arrested Tuesday morning in what prosecutors describe as a "political corruption crime spree" that included a conspiracy to benefit from selecting President-elect Obama’s Senate successor.

The governor was taken into custody around 6 a.m. after Robert Grant, the FBI special agent in charge, called and told the two-term Democrat that two FBI agents were outside his house. Blagojevich was handcuffed and led to the federal building in downtown Chicago. He will be presented to a judge this afternoon.

The 76-page criminal complaint released by authorities details conversations Blagojevich had with staffers about filling the president-elect’s Senate seat. Blagojevich, according to the recordings made public in the complaint, considered appointing himself to the seat or trying to extract payment for an appointment.

"If I don't get what I want and I'm not satisfied with it, then I'll just take the Senate seat myself," Blagojevich said. Later, he added the seat "is a [expletive] valuable thing — you don't just give it away for nothing."

On a long conference call held the Monday following Obama's election, Blagojevich said his advisers were telling him to "suck it up" for the remaining two years of his term as governor and that he would have to select Obama’s choice for the Senate seat. During the call, Blagojevich referred to Obama as a "mother[expletive].”

"[Expletive] him," Blagojevich said on the conference call. "For nothing? [Expletive] him."

The complaint is littered with profanity-laden quotes from Blagojevich, taken from conversations reported to federal officials by informants, as well as judicially authorized secret recordings of the Illinois Democrat. The "F"-word appears 18 times in the criminal charge.

"I've got this thing and it's [expletive] golden, and uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing,” Blagojevich said, according to the criminal complaint. “I'm not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there."

Federal authorities filed the complaint, which includes conspiracy and fraud allegations against Blagojevich and his top aide, John Harris. The recordings were made after federal agents placed wiretaps on Blagojevich's home phone and a bug in his campaign office.

In exchange for appointing a candidate acceptable to Obama, Blagojevich and advisers discussed asking for Cabinet positions or other posts in the administration, according to the criminal complaint. Blagojevich and aides discussed such positions as secretary of Health and Human Services, secretary of Energy and various ambassadorships. The Energy secretary, an unnamed deputy governor told Blagojevich, is "the one that makes the most money."

Blagojevich and Harris also discussed whether Obama would help the governor get work in the private sector, as head of a private foundation or as a high-ranking official with the Red Cross.

"This is a sad day for government. It's a very sad day for Illinois government. Gov. Blagojevich has taken us to a truly new low," U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said in a news conference from Chicago. "The conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave."

Along with six potential Senate candidates cited in the complaint, Blagojevich reportedly considered himself seriously for the position, under the belief that he would be able to raise more money for a defense if indicted and that he would be able to rehabilitate his image in advance of a possible run for president in 2016.

The Obama transition team has not commented on the complaint, and Fitzgerald made clear that no allegations are made against the president-elect.

Obama, who was scheduled to head to the FBI's Chicago field office for his daily security briefing, will instead head straight to his transition office for a meeting with former Vice President Al Gore. Whether the abrupt change in schedule had anything to do with Blagojevich's arrest was unclear.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), among Obama’s closest political allies, on Tuesday called for a special Illinois election to fill the Senate seat, instead of leaving it to Blagojevich.

“No appointment by this governor under these circumstances can produce a credible replacement,” Durbin said at a news conference.

The complaint also covers charges that Blagojevich withheld financial assistance from the Tribune Co. while demanding the firings of several editorial board members who had written harsh editorials criticizing the governor.

The Chicago Tribune, citing sources in federal law enforcement, said federal authorities were worried Blagojevich’s selection of a new Illinois senator would be corrupt. As a result, authorities won approval from a judge to record Blagojevich’s conversations to garner evidence against him, the Tribune reported.

The complaint alleges Blagojevich, who was asked to help the Tribune Co., tried to put pressure on the company in response to negative editorials that called for his impeachment.

An unnamed deputy governor suggested Blagojevich tell the company's owners: "I'm not sure that we can [assist] anymore because we've been getting a ton of these editorials that say, look, we're going around the legislature, we gotta stop and this is something the legislature hasn't approved. We don't want to go around the legislature anymore."

Blagojevich himself advocated a more straightforward approach: "Maybe we can't do this now. Fire those [expletive].

"Our recommendation is fire all those [expletive] people, get 'em the [expletive] out of there and get us some editorial support."

Calls to the governor's office were not returned. Fitzgerald said that while it is unusual to make an investigation into corruption allegations public so early, doing so now was necessary given what he characterized as the brazen and hastened corruption demonstrated by the Blagojevich administration.

Citing a horse-racing bill that currently sits on Blagojevich's desk and the prospect of state money being withheld from a children's hospital, along with the Senate appointment, Fitzgerald said the case required "unusual measures."

"We stepped in for a number of reasons," Fitzgerald said. "We were in the middle of a corruption crime spree and we wanted to stop it."

The Tribune reported Friday that federal authorities were taping Blagojevich, and that Democrats in the state have become concerned that whomever he chooses to succeed Obama in the Senate would be tarnished by an association with Blagojevich.

After the Tribune's report, Blagojevich and three aides discussed whether to move money out of his campaign account to avoid having it frozen. The governor also considered paying his defense attorney in advance, "with the understanding that the attorney would donate the money back at a later time if it was not needed," according to the complaint.

The Tribune's report, Fitzgerald said, came weeks after the paper first asked the U.S. attorney's office for comment on key aspects of the investigation. The paper held the story at the request of Fitzgerald in what he characterized as the public interest. "I have to take my hat off that the Tribune withheld that story for a substantial period of time," Fitzgerald said.

The expected indictment comes just a few years after Blagojevich's predecessor, former Gov. George Ryan, went to jail on corruption charges. Grant, who served as the lead federal agent on that case as well, said Blagojevich had not learned any lesson from Ryan's prosecution.

Agents who monitored the bug in Blagojevich's campaign office and the taps on his phone were "thoroughly disgusted and revolted by what they heard, and I think even the most cynical agents were shocked," Grant said. "If this isn't the most corrupt state in the U.S., it's certainly one hell of a competitor."

Federal agents are also executing search warrants in the offices of a deputy governor and at Blagojevich's campaign office, Fitzgerald said.

At a news conference Monday, Blagojevich said he had done nothing wrong and denied that the taped conversations, made as Blagojevich's former chief of staff assisted authorities, would harm his case.

"If anybody wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it," Blagojevich said. "I don't care whether you tape me privately or publicly, I can tell you that whatever I say is always lawful and the things that I'm interested in doing are always lawful."