Blagojevich Presser Live-Blog
Watching MSNBC leading up to the Blago presser. Blago has announced he is not going to take questions. Go figure.
Blago’s lawyer has already suggested that the wiretaps that caught him trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat were illegal. Expect some righteous outrage over that–though I think that’s a ploy to try to get the affidavit that justified those wiretaps, which would, in turn, reveal more about the people cooperation with Fitz.
Not guilty of any criminal wrong-doing. I will fight (repeated a bunch of times). I have done nothing wrong. And I’m not going to quit a job people hired to do bc of false accusations and political lynch mob.
Not going to talk about case in 30-second sound bites. Dying to show you how innocent I am. I intend to answer them in appropriate forum, court of law. Absolutely certain that I will be vindicated.
Kipling? He’s quoting Kipling?
Most powerful ally there is, and it’s the truth. I have the personal knowledge I have not done anything wrong. Please reserve judgment. Afford me same rights that you and your children have: presumption of innocence.
One last thing: to all of those who have expressed support, thank you for your prayers and good wishes. Patti and I cannot express how grateful we are.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays.
Well, that was short.
He has the truth on his side….
And, of course, Priscella and Lisa Marie
I’m innocent!!!
Can’t we all just settle on Armstrong Williams?
i’ve done nothin wrong. just like the duke.
Didn’t I hear a radio headline yesterday that Fitz already dismantled the illegal-wiretaps argument, and rather thoroughly at that?
I wouldn’t be surprised; Fitz is nothing if not thorough and careful to follow the law.
He gets warrants before he wiretaps.
Getting a warrant means a judge said “OK”.
That would be pretty hollow, no real argument on illegality can be made until the search/wiretap warrant affidavit is in the defense attorney’s hands and he can argue off of that.
I defer to your superior experience. As usual.
Also. Last night The Sweetie and I were discussing the surpassing strangeness of US Governors. Blago, Palin, Schwartzy… all of ‘em with images reminiscent of Diane Arbus, or maybe more like the very very strange background characters in middle Woody Allen movies. What the hell gives with Governors, anyway?
What the hell gives with Governors, anyway?
Insularity.
Regarding Chicago, I’d been waiting with bated breath to see which enclave, finding itself unexpectedly thrust into [inter!]national view, [and then the ride showed up; 4 hours later …] would be the first to learn how out of the mainstream they were. Blago and crew might not be the first, but they’re certainly the loudest to date.
Blagogate (which is almost a business as usual story) is huge compared to Libbygate which involved the outing of an American Anti-nookyular proliferation spy for Political Retaliation conducted at the highest levels of American Government.
Why is Blago so interesting where Libby and Cheeny were not?
franken up by 272.
I guess that’s all that Rod had to say which wouldn’t further incriminate him.
if blago is able to say and appoint i think we will see the first Senate refusal to seat in my lifetime. going ta be a great show.
I think I heard yesterday his lawyer saying that Blag does not plan to/will not appoint.
And no, to the haircut. Why?
well the guy looks like a sheep dog. can’t see where he is goin. that’s his problem.
His attorney has already said he won’t name anyone because of the letter signed by all the members of the Democratic Caucus.
As legislators in the impeachment hearings have repeatedly pointed out to Blago’s attorney, this is not a court. It is a political not a legal process so his resort to legalisms cuts no weight with them.
Blagopalooza 2008.
-G
Well, that was short and feeble.
Rod Blagojevich, the personification of the white man’s burden. . . or, in this case, is he the black man’s burden?
Perhaps by now Emil Jones could present a case …
While I’ve got you here, it’s about the title, “The Warren Problem: Jane on CNN.”
In days gone by people used to refer to the “Negro problem.” I’m confident that’s not what you meant, but it was a little too close for my taste.
I’m not asking you to pull any punches. Obama deserves all the flak he’s getting for Warren. But if that flak, however remotely, resembles white supremacist language, it might turn into a problem that imho we really don’t want and definitely can’t afford. Back in the FISA fight, no group was more supportive than the the Black caucus. Liberals/progressives don’t have that many allies.
No, that wasn’t my intention. It didn’t occur to me–it should have, but it didn’t.
I didn’t want to call it a “scandal” because I don’t think it is a scandal (at least not in the way Blago is a scandal); I do think it is a problem, but not quite the same as THAT kind of problem.
Thanks for pointing it out.
tell me. has the guy been able to get a haircut yet?
That is his haircut.
A recent NYT article explained that Blago becomes furious when his Paul Mitchell hairbrush disappears. It’s the only one he will use, and he calls it “the football”, as in, the nuclear football…..the briefcase containing the nuclear codes…..
all i am sayin is that his image would improve with a shorter version.
If he cared about his image there’d be a lot more changes than just the hair.
A prosecutor needs to make his/her case to a judge and a jury, if the defense has asked for one; the judge decides whether the evidence is admissible, not the press or the public.
A defendant who’s a sleazy politician and a prosecutor viewed as white knight shouldn’t short-circuit the process.
Justice is oftentimes not convenient.
Sorry but I’m not getting how to quote here
Enter your comment into the comment box. Then highlight it, then click on the ” symbol above
(symbols say B I U ABC ” etc.)
Thanks for the help Margot. Don’t get the fine points since don’t comment often here, just read- had to go for a while so I didn’t reply right away.
I think I had something else in mind though, something like this
Well, that was short and feeble.
People in Illinois pretty much thougt that Blagojevich would not go down without a fight. If you read the criminal complaint, he comes across as a fairly petty thug which is what he is. As for his lawyer, he’s a real media hound and loves to grandstand even though his efforts to sidetrack the impeachment process have been ineffective while pissing off a lot of people in Springfield. So this could well be long and drawn out but the result is inevitable.
That said, Blago is just one corrupt pol in a system that is full of them. And I don’t mean Illinois. Tom DeLay still shows up on cable news even though he ran the House of Representatives like a cash register and though he’s been indicted in Texas it wasn’t for that. We also saw Sarah Palin’s interesting view of expenses both during the campaign and from the reports she eventually made public. I do not mean to defend Blago in any way. I didn’t vote for him two years ago because I thought he was a crook then but nowadays you could come up with a shorter list of who isn’t a crook in politics than who is.
I really don’t get these press conferences where the obvious crook gets up at talks about how eager they are to tell you their side of the story…and then they don’t tell you their side of the story.
ya got me there.
I saw it on MSRNC and Tweety loved it. He loved the way the guv stood up there and displayed like a bantam rooster, and he quoted one of Tweety’s favorite poems.
Oh and btw, if anyone is going to be in Chicago I highly recommend seeing Second City’s current show America: All Better, featuring several scenes with Rahm Emanuel and his truncated little finger. In one of them he threatens to “tea bag your grandmother.” It’s good stuff.
Blago and his attorney make quite the eye candy.
they both have that junk yard dog look.
HA!
I’d like to have Blago’s hair. His problems, not so much.
I guess the right will be happy he’s clearly taken sides in the War on Christmas (TM)
Re Blago’s hair, you have to understand that he’s always expected everyone around him to take the haircut, not him.
I’m surprised he didn’t end with:
*sing along*
“Well, its one for the money,
Two for the show,
Three to get ready,
Now go, cat, go…
But dont you step on my blue suede shoes….
You can do anything but lay off of my blue suede shoes…
Well, you can knock me down,
Step in my face,
Slander my name
All over the place.
Do anything that you want to do, but uh-uh,
Honey, lay off of my shoes
Dont you step on my blue suede shoes.
You can do anything but lay off of my blue suede shoes!”
hahahaha
Jane has a new post up.
Selling Osama a Senate Seat
Selling Obama’s Senate Seat
Those FISA wire taps were just off a smidgeon!
Proves that not only is FISA wiretapping good, it is essential for democracy!
Who knew Kipling used the letters U, C and K so much?
Did it go something like…
There’s an “I don’t know, he’s never Kippled!” joke in there somewhere.
5 – I don’t know if this is what you mean or not, but I think I heard a passing reference to the fact that the campaign offices in general, as well as phones, were bugged and someone at the presser tried to ask a kind of off the wall question about whether or not Fitzgerald hadn’t just done the same thing that the Plumbers did in Watergate and he pretty disdainfully dismissed that.
On the wiretapping front, I have to kind of think that, while Fitzgerald got warrants and “his” surveillance was presumptively legal (until defense counsel gets a shot at the warrants) Blago, along with a cast of thousands and thousands, was ALSO the subject of unconstitutional wiretapping as well. Remember the Obama Seal of Approval program?
Back in the day (which isn’t this day) it was the illegal wiretaps of the White Panthers – wiretaps that supposedly the lawyers handling the criminal case against them didn’t even know anything about when they filed charges; wiretaps that were supposedly just for “national security” purposes; and wiretaps that were only “targeting” the other part of the calls – those were the taps at issue in the Keith case and that ended up cratering the whole case.
Of course, here the DOJ won’t be coughing up the illegal taps like it did when Judge Keith made his orders. This DOJ has figured out it doesn’t have to do anything but lie to the courts and destroy evidence and the courts are pretty acquiescent. From the time of the Keith case, and with the benefit of FISA and the Church commission we’ve now “progressed” to where the illegal surveillance info will be hidden, lied about, asserted as being “legalized” by Congress, etc. and the DOJ will be re-writing the outcome of the Keith case – at least, that’s a probability guess on my part. With so many thousands the subject of illegal surveillance, how would you follow the Keith precedents and ever be able to convice anyone of anything?
Different, I think. I may be remembering a 2-sentence he-said/he-said thing from Marketplace radio, or it might have been from Olberman or Maddow on The TV Machine. (The brain, she no remember so good no more.) Boiled down to Blago’s atty saying in a presser that the wiretaps were illegally obtained, followed Fitz’ office replying that actually yes, a judge approved it good & proper, in advance even. That’s all.
Cleaned and pressed. How would you like your starch maam?
It’s an awkward poem to quote because it doesn’t actually get anywhere unless you quote the whole thing — it’s entirely a series of subordinate clauses until you get to the end. I haven’t been able to watch yet (just read the transcript), to hear whether Blago twisted one of those in the delivery to make it sound as though it was going somewhere, but in the original, it doesn’t, not all by itself.
46 – enough to hold up my slackening jaw.
The reason he can’t take questions is because he’s too dumb to know when he’s saying something that will get him in more trouble.
He’s been under investigation for over four years, and just the day before he was arrested he was bragging that if anyone wanted to listen to his phone calls go ahead – he didn’t have anything to hide.
Very next day – Fitz is playing tapes of his phone calls. Ha!