Golden (56 page)

“I don't know if it's going to happen or if it's possible. Maybe at the appropriate time as this unfolds you guys might be able to, you know, close it,” Blagojevich said. “And as this unfolds I think Dick Durbin will play a big role, but we will see.”

“Hmmm,” said Menendez. “That sounds like a Madigan thing.”

“Yeah,” said the governor. “Well that's it.”

Most of Blagojevich's calls were trending in that direction. The governor seemed to be settling in on making his nemesis happy in a bid to do something political in exchange for the seat. Among his conversations captured by the feds was one with White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf and another with Chicago Teamsters boss John Coli.

“And she's got a name that probably can hang on to that seat beyond two years,” Coli said.

“Yeah, oh yeah,” Blagojevich said. “And the downside is they turn me down and then, OK, fine, you guys will all know I have gone the extra mile man to try to get you a capital bill.”

“Absolutely.”

“OK, sleep on this,” said the governor. “I haven't gotten my head yet completely in this place yet.”

“I will,” Coli told him. “It's just between the two of us, and we will chat a little privately on Tuesday…. If you can make it on the ninth to our party that would be great.”

On December 4, Blagojevich spoke again to Monk, who was heading out of town. They agreed it made sense for the governor to follow up with Johnston by phone, “from a pressure point of view.” Blagojevich said it was good Monk had gotten in his face.

Early in the day, Blagojevich seemed to be sewing up his push for the Madigan deal, asking Greenlee to prepare a more finalized, simplified list of demands to make in exchange for making Lisa Madigan the new senator. He was only dealing with brief flashes of anger about her, questioning why he would make life so easy for her but then quickly talking himself down.

He told Harris how upset the thought was making him.

There was no mercy or compassion about her, Blagojevich said. She was “the anti-Portia,” he went on.

Who? said Harris.

“Portia in fucking Shakespeare's
Merchant of Venice.
She gave that, you know, the soliloquy, er, on mercy, on the quality of mercy speech,” Blagojevich explained. “There is no mercy, man. And this fucking bitch wants to be senator, and I'm going to hand her a Senate seat. Fuck these people. These are bad people, man. Bad people!”

He spat at Greenlee to find workable solutions he could ask for on issues like taxes, something meaningful. If he was going to name Lisa Madigan, there was going to have to be a significant payout for the people. Greenlee agreed and promised to make focused asks on things that people knew about and lived with. People in Cook County were certainly feeling sales tax increases. “Yeah,” Blagojevich said. “Fucking right!”

In the news that day was talk of a clemency bid for former governor George Ryan, who had been sent to prison for more than six years in the license-for-bribes scandal. It was upsetting Blagojevich that people had thrown around his name with Ryan's for so long, he told Greenlee.

“George Ryan's a fucking crook. It is so fucking galling to me that, you know, I'm being linked to George Ryan in some respect, you know, that I'm
being scrutinized like this because I'm so not like that guy. Don't you think? I'm anything but a buddy down there,” Blagojevich said of Springfield. “He was pals with everybody. What do you want? Take care of this. Take care of that. He was a total inside guy.”

Blagojevich said the same thing to Yang in another call that morning. George Ryan was a crook and a hack and nothing like him, but he was seventy-four and had an ailing wife. Maybe it was time for an ounce of mercy. Lisa Madigan—the merciless one—had of course stripped Ryan of his pension and had come out against clemency for him. Now Blagojevich was going to just hand her a seat in the Senate, he said, again, but at least it would be part of a megadeal.

But during the course of the day, Jesse Jackson Jr.'s name began to creep back into the conversation, first in a call the governor had with Patti and then in one with Harris when Blagojevich told his chief of staff to float the name again with Rahm Emanuel. Blagojevich thought he had promised too many people that he would never name Jackson, and he needed to communicate that a Jackson choice was still possible. If people like Durbin, Reid, and Menendez wanted Lisa Madigan, they needed to get going and help him make it happen. And whether the goal with Jackson was indeed a head fake or becoming a more substantial possibility, Blagojevich scheduled a meeting with him for Monday, December 8.

He told Yang in a call late that morning that he planned to sit down with Jackson, as repugnant as the idea was. Maybe it was something he needed to open his mind to. By the way, the Jackson camp had offered a whole bunch of things to him, Blagojevich told Yang. “You know, fund-raising.”

It was all supposed to be an elaborate ploy, but Blagojevich continued to bolster the idea that to him, maybe it wasn't. After Yang, the governor was back on the phone again with Harris.

“I'm honestly going to objectively look at the value of putting Jesse Jr. there,” he told Harris. “As ridiculous as it is and as painful and offensive as it is and as, uh, I'm going to think about—I mean if I am prepared to put Lisa Madigan there and that doesn't work out the fallback is OK, well, what's your next play.”

Jackson was the “uber African American,” Blagojevich reminded Harris. He would consider what it would mean in black politics and how it would strengthen him, Blagojevich said, and don't forget, third parties had offered him $1.5 million in fund-raising help. “They're throwing numbers around,” the governor said. He could repair the damage with other allies, like Balanoff,
who had been told Jackson would never be picked. Blagojevich said he could just tell Balanoff “the Obama people were pigs” who didn't give up anything.

The conversation with Harris was followed by several with Lucio Guerrero. Blagojevich wanted it planted in the
Sun-Times
that he was considering Jackson. Someone like the paper's Washington writer Lynn Sweet could possibly be given a story. Remind her that Blagojevich and Jackson's father, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, had traveled to Yugoslavia together to negotiate the release of US soldiers. There was an old relationship there that people had forgotten about, the governor said, and don't forget that Obama would support the pick. The presidentelect had passed four names to him after Jarrett withdrew, and one was the younger Jackson.

At 2:09 P
M,
Blagojevich was back on the phone with Yang discussing a poll that was positive on Jackson, which was timely since that's the way Blagojevich said he was then leaning. Greenlee was on the call too, and he was not amused with the idea. He had made it clear on past calls that he was no fan of Jackson Jr.

“I'm not joking,” Greenlee said. “If you do Jesse Jackson, I can't promise I'm staying here.”

“Yeah, well don't give up on—look, Greenlee, I'd love to keep you, but at some point, man, I mean, you're asking me to do Lisa Madigan,” Blagojevich answered.

Madigan had zero support from African Americans, so that should give him pause, the governor said. Greenlee said to him, Jackson was simply untrustworthy. Whatever deal could be struck with him—which Blagojevich had said might possibly include keeping black candidates from running against him in the future—would seemingly have to be taken with a grain of salt. Fair enough, Blagojevich said, but there were tangible things for the Jacksons he could get up front this time.

“Is this, is essentially the deal with Jesse Jr. will be that the Jacksons will support you for reelection?” Yang asked.

“No, there's more to it,” Blagojevich answered.

“What else?”

“There's tangible, concrete, tangible stuff from supporters,” Blagojevich said, as Yang pressed for more detail. “Well like, you know. You know what I'm talking about,” the governor finally told him. “Specific amounts and everything.”

Well, said Yang, he would have to rely on the governor's judgment as to what was being offered and whether “there's enough candy for you.”

“Two equally repugnant picks, on a personal level,” Blagojevich said later in the call. “However, I must say, having ex-, some experience with both of them, if they were both drowning and I could save one, I really think I'd save Jesse. Just so you, so that means, from a personal standpoint, he's less objectionable to me than she is.”

Only minutes after the three hung up, Greenlee called the governor back. They had barely said hello before Blagojevich chastised him for how he had spoken up on the call with Yang. Don't talk too much out of turn, Blagojevich said, because Greenlee didn't fully know what was going on. He was just trying to further leverage Jackson Jr. with the “national people,” like Yang, who was in Washington.

“I see what your play is,” a skeptical Greenlee answered; he got it. Blagojevich said he wanted Washington Democrats to say “holy fuck” and really think it could be Jesse. It was all a play, said Blagojevich, who had said so many times he would never, ever appoint Jackson. But it was clear to Greenlee that the dam was cracked, and Blagojevich quickly undercut himself yet again.

“And by the way, you know, who knows, it could be,” the governor said of a Jackson pick, seemingly trying to get his deputy governor to warm to the idea. “I'm not gonna completely rule it out.”

When prosecutors heard Blagojevich make the “tangible” remark, they believed the Jackson proposal was in fact the way the governor was going to go. They did not believe the Madigan plan was realistic, and they were operating under the belief that Blagojevich knew that as well. The governor had said so on many calls, guessing that Madigan was probably going to reject him. Prosecutors and the FBI knew that when Blagojevich was floating his Madigan idea, he was thinking of asking the Speaker of the House for billions in programs with no reasonable funding source, and he was supposedly going to ask for it to be accomplished in days or weeks. Blagojevich had been recorded saying that if and when Madigan said no, he would at least get the political benefit of having it look like he was trying to do something for the people.

And Blagojevich wasn't done making phone calls. Moments after talking to Greenlee and trying to assure him Jackson was at least mostly a mirage, he was talking to his brother, his chief fundraiser who had fielded most of the offers from the Jackson camp. Raghu Nayak had sent Robert faxed letters of support for Jackson and had told Bedi and others about the fund-raising offer. Robert Blagojevich didn't have Harry Reid's ear or that of
anyone in the game, but the governor was giving him directions now. And the direction was to go and see Nayak about the Jesse Jackson Jr. appointment. Blagojevich was no longer completely ruling out naming Jackson, he told his brother. Jackson was being elevated, and Washington was freaking out. Why should it be necessary that he appoint Madigan and get nothing? “Fuck you, Harry Reid,” Blagojevich said.

Go and talk to Nayak in person, Blagojevich said, and tell him the Jackson pick was realistic. But about those promises of help, some of that stuff had to start happening immediately.

“Right now. And we've gotta see it,” Blagojevich said. “You understand? Now you gotta be careful how you express that. And assume everybody's listening, the whole world's listening.”

Robert followed his brother's direction and called Nayak, setting up a meeting that would take place the next day, December 5, “someplace quiet that we can just sit and talk.” The men chose a coffee shop where they would plan to meet at about one o'clock.

But it was a meeting that never happened.

The governor would never have known it, but the newsroom of the Tribune Tower was active well into the evening of December 4. The paper had written about John Wyma receiving a subpoena weeks earlier after confronting him outside the Friends of Blagojevich but had not yet written about any help he was giving the federal government. Now that was about to change. After receiving information that the federal net was rapidly coming down on Blagojevich, the newspaper was pushing to publish a story that Wyma's cooperation had led to recordings being made by investigators. The newspaper also had information about a planned arrest date and that the investigation had spread to whether Blagojevich had corrupted the process of choosing a new senator to replace Barack Obama. A decision by top editors led to the paper holding off on reporting about the Senate seat allegations, at least temporarily, but the choice was made to go forward with a story on Wyma and the recordings of the governor. Reporter John Chase, who had covered Blagojevich for years, was chosen to contact the governor's press team and try to get some kind of comment.