The Blagojevich Case: Why Did Fitzgerald Act Now?
A corruption investigation stopped short.
NRO
By Byron York
There are a lot of questions stemming from the criminal complaint detailing Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's alleged efforts to sell the Senate seat vacated by President-Elect Barack Obama. Who are the various advisers and potential candidates named in the 76-page complaint? What, if any, contacts did Blagojevich or his emissaries have with representatives of the Obama transition? And did Obama ever speak to Blagojevich about the issue? (Obama says he didn't, and top adviser David Axelrod now says he was "mistaken" when he said the two men had, in fact, talked.)
But of all those questions, perhaps the most intriguing is why prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, whose office had been gathering astonishing evidence implicating Blagojevich and others, went public Tuesday with the criminal complaint and arrest of Blagojevich. Why not let the investigation go on, at least for a bit longer? At his news conference, Fitzgerald attributed his action to Blagojevich's allegedly corrupt dealings involving a Chicago hospital, and corrupt dealings toward the Tribune company, and then added, "You take that, and what's going on, and add it to the fact that we have a Senate seat that seemed to be as recently as days ago auctioned off to the highest bidder for campaign contributions and Gov. Blagojevich's own words on the tape, on the bug, that set forth in the complaint talked about selling this like a sports agent. So we stepped in for a number of reasons."
Later in his news conference, however, Fitzgerald suggested that the alleged Senate deal had come to drive the investigation — "When there's a bunch of people scheming in private, and they think no one's listening and no one's aware of it, they can do a heck of a lot more than when someone goes and basically raids the crime in plot and airs what's going on," he said. And a reading of the criminal complaint suggests that events in the alleged Senate selloff might have been what tipped prosecutors toward action. As the investigation moved toward what appeared to be a climax, with perhaps a deal to be made for a Senate seat, a media report scared Blagojevich, who up to that point that had displayed astonishingly brazen behavior. Blagojevich stopped the Senate-selling negotiations and began planning a legal defense — and Fitzgerald, his target now on the alert, went public a short time later.
The complaint describes in detail several conversations Blagojevich had concerning the Senate seat, starting on November 3, the day before Barack Obama was elected president, and going on for ten days, until November 13. In conversations secretly recorded by Fitzgerald's office during that period, Blagojevich clumsily discussed all sorts of options through which he might profit from the Senate appointment — a Cabinet job for himself, a major position with a Democratic-dominated union, a new charity/activist organization that would pay Blagojevich a healthy sum.
After several pages of detailing those machinations, the criminal complaint takes an abrupt turn, describing no wiretaps for a period of three weeks. The complaint says Blagojevich had "numerous conversations" about the Senate seat during that period, but it doesn't detail any. Then, it skips forward to a conversation that took place on December 4. That suggests the conversations that took place in the three weeks after November 13 broke no new ground, as far as Blagojevich's corrupt plans were concerned.
And then, on December 4, something changed, and that change was the presence of the person referred to in the complaint as "Candidate Five." If the complaint is correct, in "Candidate Five," Blagojevich finally found a prospective senator who might come up with money — $500,000 for Blagojevich's political organization — in return for the Obama seat. From the criminal complaint:
>>> On December 4, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH spoke to Advisor B and informed Advisor B that he was giving Senate Candidate 5 greater consideration for the Senate seat because, among other reasons, if ROD BLAGOJEVICH ran for re-election Senate Candidate 5 would "raise[] money" for ROD BLAGOJEVICH, although ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he might "get some (money) up front, maybe" from Senate Candidate 5 to insure Senate Candidate 5 kept his promise about raising money for ROD BLAGOJEVICH. (In a recorded conversation on October 31, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH described an earlier approach by an associate of Senate Candidate Five as follows: "We were approached 'pay to play.' That, you know, he'd raise me 500 grand. An emissary came. Then the other guy would raise a million, if I made him (Senate Candidate 5) a Senator.")<<<
The complaint goes on to say that on that same day, December 4, Blagojevich told a person referred to as Fundraiser A that he was "elevating" Candidate Five on the Senate list in the hopes that Candidate Five would provide something "tangible up front." Blagojevich told Fundraiser A to "reach out" to an associate of Candidate Five and say that Blagojevich was under pressure to appoint somebody else and wanted to know if Candidate Five would really come up with the money, especially because, in the words of the complaint, Blagojevich "had a prior bad experience with Candidate Five not keeping his word." (That, of course, suggests that Candidate Five is probably a well-known political figure in Illinois; no definitive word yet on who that is.) Blagojevich told Fundraiser A to meet personally with the associate of Candidate Five and, in the words of the complaint, "communicate the 'urgency' of the situation."
The dealing seemed very close to a climax — and an explosive political scandal. And then, on the morning of December 5, the Chicago Tribune ran a story on its front page reporting that law enforcement had secretly recorded Blagojevich's conversations as part of a criminal investigation. Blagojevich immediately instructed Fundraiser A to "undo" the plan to meet personally with the associate of Candidate Five. Blagojevich instead turned his energy to preparing his legal defense.
The deal was off, blown, apparently, by the Tribune's report. For anyone who has watched the case, the astonishing thing is that Blagojevich, prior to December 5, could possibly have assumed that he wasn't under surveillance. But he apparently did, making for some of the juiciest political wiretaps in years. And he appeared to be moving toward actually making a corrupt deal to sell Obama's Senate seat when he finally, belatedly, figured things out. And that seems to be the best explanation for why prosecutor Fitzgerald went public on December 9, instead of letting the case continue for a while longer.
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