Even by Chicago standards, the criminal complaint against Rod Blagojevich is a page-turner.
Federal prosecutors detail phone calls in which the two-term Democratic governor seeks to profit from choosing a successor for President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat - suggesting a Cabinet appointment for himself, or a corporate seat for his wife worth at least $150,000 a year, among other options, according to the affadavit.
They also charge him with threatening to withhold a state tax break worth $100 million to Chicago-based Tribune Company, which filed for bankruptcy protection Monday, in connection with the sale of Wrigley Field, the home of the Chicago Cubs.
His alleged price for playing ball? “The firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members sharply critical” of him, according to the affadavit filed by the United States Attorney’s office in the Northern District of Illinois. The writers were not fired, Tribune said today.
Blagojevich, 51, and his chief of staff, John Harris, were taken into custody at their homes in Chicago early this morning and were later released after posting bail. Both were charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery.
The 76-page affidavit caps a five-year investigation into allegations of “pay to play” deals in famously corrupt Illinois politics. The man who emerges from its pages is alternately defiant and desperate-sounding as he attempts to navigate a post-gubernatorial path for himself..
It quotes snippets of a two-hour phone call Nov. 10 involving Blagojevich, his wife, Patti, and chief of staff Harris and several Washington advisers, for instance, in which the governor discusses ways to profit from choosing Obama’s successor.
Blagojevich, who had sole authority under Illinois law to make the choice, says he needs to consider his family and their financial struggles, and does “not want to be Governor for the next two years.”
He wonders whether the president-elect might make him secretary of health and human services or give him an ambassadorship in exchange for a particular choice. Later, he throws out the possibility of a “substantial salary” for himself at a nonprofit organization, or a corporate directorship for his wife that might pay $150,000.
“I want to make money,” he says, according to the complaint.
During the same call, Blagojevich complains bitterly that consultants are telling him he has to “suck it up” for two years and do nothing, and give this “motherf***** [the President-elect] his senator. F*** him. For nothing? F*** him.”
Blagojevich insists he would choose someone else altogether, rather than appoint someone Obama wanted “and I don’t get anything.”
In another quoted conversation, he mulls the possibility of naming himself to the open Senate seat.
That would have several advantages, he says - he would likely get more financial help if he is indicted as a sitting senator as opposed to a sitting governor, and it would also help him remake his image in consideration of a possible run for President in 2016, according to the papers.
Blagojevich, who came into office in 2002, portrayed himself as a reformer after the one-term former governor, George Ryan, who was convicted of racketeering and fraud in 2006. The Chicago Tribune quoted him as saying on Monday, “whether you tape me privately or publicly, I can tell you that whatever I say is always lawful and the things I’m interested in are always lawful.”
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