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The next big trial

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Illinois
Blagojevich Trial

* Carol Marin writes about the next big federal corruption trial. Bill Cellini’s trial will begin either late this year or early next year. But there’s a problem…

He’s charged with trying to shake down, with the help of Levine, Rezko and Kelly, a Hollywood movie producer. In exchange for allowing that producer’s investment company to handle $220 million in state teacher pension funds, the producer would be required to kick back cash to them. Or give Blagojevich a $1.5 million campaign contribution as a thank you.

It didn’t happen. The producer refused to be extorted but got the state business anyway.

At Rezko’s trial, it was the only thing he was acquitted of — raising the question of how strong this same charge is against Cellini.

We don’t know.

Nor do we know if the government has more alleged pay-to-play schemes up its sleeve.

We’ll see when the government files its proffer.

It’ll be quite fascinating, I’m sure. But, as Marin rightly notes, there won’t be long lines waiting to get into the courtroom or any national TV coverage.

* This morning’s court action was about what happens if Blagojevich is found guilty. Forfeiture and new evidence…

U.S. District Judge James Zagel just concluded a brief session in court to lay out some of the details of another hearing he might hold to instruct the same jurors if they ultimately find Blagojevich guilty. In that event, the jury will be sent back to decide what personal and political assets Blagojevich should be required to forfeit as part of his punishment.

Blagojevich and his wife, Patti, could lose property they own, including their Ravenswood Manor home. Also at issue is control of cash from the ex-governor’s political fund, Friends of Blagojevich, which has been tapped for court-approved payments to lawyers and other expenses.

Before jurors would adjourn to decide what should be forfeited, prosecutors said they planned to briefly present new evidence concerning the political fund that wasn’t presented at trial. Zagel said the timing of the forfeiture hearing would depend on what time of day the jury returned its verdict.

* Reporters are apparently bored out of their minds…

I’ve seen the best minds of my generation, starving, hysterical tired, waiting for a Blagojevich verdict.

The 2nd Floor of the Dirksen Federal Building, where the cafeteria and couches are located, is full of reporters from every local TV station, working on their laptops. They are huddled at tables that are located near electrical outlets, in order to keep their laptops charging in the event of a verdict.

Most are reading the headlines from the day on news websites. Just two tables over, half of Rod and Robert Blagojevich’s defense team sits. They are on hand, waiting for any possible jury questions. Sam Adam Jr. & Sr. are not here.

They’ve even resorted to asking jury food choice questions to fill space…

The federal marshal won’t even say what they’re eating for lunch.

Any suggestions for how they might get through their days?

* Roundup…

* Sign Shop Chief Ousted by Blago’s Team Loses Appeal: An Illinois employee who was fired and replaced by a political ally of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration lost his First Amendment lawsuit against state officials in the 7th Circuit. The Chicago-based federal appeals court ruled that the state officials are immune from William Moss’s lawsuit for damages, even though the firing was politically motivated.

* Brown: Listening in on Blagojevich’s final day to chat freely

* Sneed: Blagojevich stays low key for daughter’s birthday

* What’s weighing on Blagojevich jurors

* Bettors, bookies believe odds stacked against Rod Blagojevich

* Zorn: If Blago is acquitted, does that un-do the prohibition on him running for office in Illinois?

posted by Rich Miller
Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 1:27 pm

Comments

{I’ve seen the best minds of my generation, starving, hysterical tired, waiting for a Blagojevich verdict.}

Is this a direct quote from someone? Who could be responsible for such steroid induced hyperbole!

With no offense to those in the journalistic profession; if these people represent the greatest minds of any generation then the person professing this must either be a hermit, or we are all in very,very deep trouble

Comment by Quinn T. Sential Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 1:59 pm
QTS, it’s a play on the poem “Howl.”

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,”

Comment by Rich Miller Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 2:01 pm
Then I guess Allan Ginsberg was the one responsible for such steroid-induced — or maybe in his case, other-drug-induced — hyperbole.

Comment by Secret Square Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 2:04 pm
It’s absurdity must have truly been intended as a tool for maximum shock value; the likes of which even Jon Burge could not effectively employ.

Comment by Quinn T. Sential Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 2:06 pm
“The 2nd Floor of the Dirksen Federal Building, where the cafeteria and couches are located, is full of reporters from every local TV station, working on their laptops. They are huddled at tables that are located near electrical outlets, in order to keep their laptops charging in the event of a verdict.”

Whaaa??? this is the 21st century - with all manner of devices available for instant communication, why would they do this? If and when an announcement of a being verdict reached is made, there is going of to be plenty of notice. I don’t understand why media folks have to be physically present all day long.

Comment by Hunterdon Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 2:07 pm
===I don’t understand why media folks have to be physically present all day long. ===

Nature of the new beast. Instantaneous react.

Comment by Rich Miller Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 2:08 pm
===I don’t understand why media folks have to be physically present all day long. ====
It takes time to get through security, especially if everyone is rushing in at the same time. Zagel said he would give a half hour to an hours notice and you wouldn’t want to be last in line with your shoes off and everything else going through the scanners.

Comment by Been There Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 2:19 pm
Don’t know about the rest of those fellas, but it was an “…up day….” for me!

Comment by Justice Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 2:21 pm
We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don’t protest, we are bored to death, there’s no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste… In an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness! - Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Comment by Dooley Dudright Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 2:23 pm
Physically being there, beyond the security checkpoints, I understand. But with laptops, wireless internet access and cell phones, they might just work on oh, say, other stories? I know most of the editors I once had when I was a reporter would have demanded that.

Comment by Northsider Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 2:28 pm
Blagojevich! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Blagojevich! Blagojevich! Nightmare of Blagojevich! Blagojevich the loveless! Mental Blagojevich! Blagojevich the heavy judger of men!

Blagojevich the incomprehensible prison!

Blagojevich the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Blagojevich whose buildings are judgment! Blagojevich the vast stone of war! Blagojevich the stunned governments!

Blagojevich whose mind is pure machinery! Blagojevich whose blood is running money! Blagojevich whose fingers are ten armies! Blagojevich whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Blagojevich whose ear is a smoking tomb!

Comment by Rich Miller Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 2:31 pm
That really fits quite well. Wish I could tell Ginsberg.

Comment by Rich Miller Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 2:37 pm
What if Blago starts quoting Beat poets instead of 19th-century Brits?

Comment by Secret Square Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 2:46 pm
I dunno, but I may have stumbled upon my next Sun-Times column. I have discovered Moloch!

Comment by Rich Miller Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 2:50 pm
That was great, Rich. Now, have to clean the diet Coke off the laptop…..

Comment by Arthur Andersen Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 2:58 pm
How about this for the last big trial:

{Two former political workers for Ald. Bernard Stone (50th) were each sentenced to nearly a year in Cook County Jail today for attempting to manipulate absentee ballots in the Stone’s hotly contested 2007 election.

Anish Eapen — a precinct captain for Stone and a Streets and Sanitation superintendent — was convicted in June along with Armando Ramos — an unemployed student — following a bench trial that began late last year.

Prosecutors charged the men with approaching residents in the ward and offering to help them cast absentee ballots, in some cases even filling out ballots for some of the alleged victims.

Eapen also allegedly used his position as a streets and sanitation official to influence voters, implying that he could help them with whatever problems they might have with the city.}

Comment by Quinn T. Sential Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 3:05 pm
Real holy Laughter. Thinks Rich, for the inducement to reread an American classic.

Comment by Easily Entertained Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 3:27 pm
Rich…what a HOWL. The milk came out my nose!

Comment by D.P. Gumby Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 3:34 pm
==The federal marshal won’t even say what they’re eating for lunch.==

Overly dramatic defense attorneys? Or smug prosecutors? Maybe both?

Comment by Pat Robertson Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 3:36 pm
AUGUST is the cruellest month, breeding
Reporters out of their dead careers, mixing
Fact and fiction, stirring
Dead laptops with wireless connectivity.
The Trial kept us alive, covering
Politics in Blagotown, bleeding
A silent lifeless defense dry.

Verdicts surprise us, coming over the transom
Or with a puff of white smoke; all stopped at the Dirksen,
And went on through Security, into the Foodgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Blogger, stamm’ aus Reporter, echt deutsch.

Comment by VanillaMan Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 3:40 pm
Best comments thread here in months. Thanks to Courtney Copenhagen for providing the inspiration.

Illinois by Rod Blagojevich
Illinois I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
Illinois *expletive* golden December 9, 2008.
I can’t stand my own mind.
Illinois when will we end the human war?
Go *expletive* yourself with your articles of impeachment.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
Illinois when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your hundred Blago fans?
Illinois why are your coffers full of dust?
Illinois when will you send your vaccines to Pakistan?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
need with my good looks?
Illinois after all it is you and I who are perfect not
the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Obama is in Washington I don’t think he’ll come back
it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
Illinois stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
Illinois the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday
somebody goes on trial for murder.
Illinois I feel sentimental about Nixon.
Illinois I used to be a Republican when I was a kid
I’m not sorry.
I buy suits every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
in the closet.
When I go to the Dirksen Federal Building I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Kipling.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
Illinois I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle
Max after he came over from Serbia.

I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Chicago Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Business-
men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am Illinois.
I am talking to myself again.

The feds are rising against me.
I haven’t got George Ryan’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two hundred suits
millions of ties an indefagitable
private hairbrush that goes 1400 miles an hour
and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the memories of Dan Walker, George Ryan
is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that
I’m a national joke.
Illinois how can I write a holy litany in your silly
mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as
individual as his automobiles more so they’re
all different sexes.
Illinois I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
down on your old strophe
Illinois free Tony Rezko
Illinois save the Loyalist Fundraisers
Illinois Chris Kelly must not die
Illinois I am Gandhi.
Illinois when I was thirty-seven Patti took me to Democratic meetings they sold us garbanzos a
handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and
sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
cere you have no idea what a good thing the
party was in 1992 Dan Rostenkowski was a grand
old man a real mensch David Axelrod made me
cry I once saw Dick Mell plain. Everybody
must have been a spy.
Illinois you don’t really want to raise taxes.
Illinois it’s them bad Madigans.
Them Madigans them Madigans and them Quinn.
And them Madiganns.
The Madigan wants to eat us alive. The Madigan’s power
mad. He wants to take our cars from out our
garages.
He wants to grab Chicago. He needs a Tribune.
He wants our baby’s health care.
Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Help I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here look dignified.
Him need ward bosses. Hah. Him make me
work more than two hours a day. Help.
Illinois this is quite serious.
Illinois this is the impression I get from looking in
the television set.
Illinois is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to go to Levanworth or turn lathes
in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and
psychopathic anyway.
Illinois I’m putting my corrupt shoulder to the wheel.

Comment by Boone Logan Square Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 4:34 pm
“Nevermore.”

Comment by unclesam Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 4:42 pm
Thirty years ago people spoke with awe of Cellini’s control over state government and his ability to profit from it. I hope he gets a day in court.

Comment by wordslinger Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 4:45 pm
If you can keep your head when those about you/
Are losing theirs, and blaming it on/
Rod…

Comment by Cheryl44 Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 5:32 pm
If one of the alleged co-conspirators wasn’t guilty of conspiracy, doesn’t that mean ipso facto that there was no such conspiracy?

Comment by steve schnorf Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 5:51 pm
Steve, that would make sense… if there were only two alleged co-conspirators.

Comment by KeepSmiling Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 6:04 pm
I’m thinking the Cellini trial should be MORE interesting. Cellini is one of the guys who really cashed in. Blago himself was just a piker by comparison during the Blago years. The snooze fest that Blago’s trial ended up being reflected that. Wow he had $400 ties! Oh right, it was his own money, or credit or whatever.

And is it safe to say now that Kjellander beat the rap? Seriously?

Comment by just sayin' Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 6:31 pm
KS; I take words at their plain meaning. Isn’t the government’s assertion that a conspiracy among A. B, C, and D existed, and the conspirators engaged in or conspired to engage in illegal acts? At the point that A, B, C, or D is found not guilty in a federal court of that charge, isn’t the assertion at that point simply, as a matter of fact, false? A, B, C, and D did not engage in such a conspiracy.

Comment by steve schnorf Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 7:03 pm
Having spent more than a little bit of time at Dirksen in the 2nd floor cafeteria, I know one thing the ‘newsies’ better not be doing, which is trying to interview anybody when they are in the cafeteria.

Not.a.good.idea.

Been attempted once that I know of, and reportedly, the powers-that-be didn’t take too kindly to it.

The cafeteria ran a really good breakfast. Lunch was shaky, until they started having some outside entities (like Robinson’s Ribs, etc.) come in on different days each week for lunch.

The point about the search for electrical outlets in interesting, because there is a real shortage of outlets in the cafeteria.

I always halfway expected somebody to bring in a 6 outlet surge protector for use up in cafeteria. Always wondered how security would have handled that

Comment by Judgment Day Is On The Way Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 7:24 pm
slobo, I know where Milan is. You wanna try to post again? I’ll have someone sent to your house.

Comment by Rich Miller Wednesday, Aug 4, 10 @ 10:39 pm