The First Jesse Jackson Jr-Related Blagojevich Contact Was Before October 31
Here’s a detail I just noticed. Earlier, I said the first date in Fitz’s Senate Seat Sale timeline was on November 3.
But that’s not right. In his discussion of a December 4 conversation Blago had, Fitz wrote:
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.”)
In other words, Fitz’s Senate Seat Sale chronology actually starts four days earlier than it appears to, on October 31.
The sentence is convoluted, but what I think it says is: On October 31, Blago was recorded saying that he had already been approached by a Jesse Jackson Jr. associate saying that (and here’s where I get lost) the associate would raise half a million–and possibly that someone else would raise a million–if JJJ were named Senator.
This detail is important for several reasons. First, it shows that the chronology that Fitz appears to show us, starting on November 3, leaves out earlier known discussion(s) about selling the seat (which reiterates my point that Fitz is showing us primarily the attempts to deal to Obama–and not any other potential conversations about the seat. It suggests Fitz may have more relating to JJJ’s emissaries (certainly, JJJ remained an active candidate to replace Obama between October 31 and today).
This looks even worse for JJJ than the appearance that someone approached Blago more recently–in the last week or so.
But remember–this still does not directly implicate JJJ. It is Blago’s representation of what someone associated with JJJ had said. Given JJJ’s narrow denial today (that he hadn’t authorized anyone to make deals with Blago), it suggests that JJJ insists he did not know of this offer.
Thanks ew.
digg
Fitz!!! Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Seriously, thanks for all the hard work you put into reading all the documents and parsing out the words and chronologies in complex cases. It is nice to have somewhere to go to get the real scoop. From longtime lurker…
What a pleasure, EW. Back in Fitz mode. Those were the dayz.
I’m not convinced this is such a good thing
I think ew went after the red cape here …
I’m used to ew pegging the matadore, not the cape
forget about blago the jagoff
let’s get back to the important stuff
anybody figured out how the House decided to waste my money bailing out 1 and a half of the big two an a half today ???
and who do you like in the Nawlins vs Chicago matchup ???
jus say, is all …
From everything I hear, if GM files for bankruptcy, the credit default swaps are a mess that could drag down the entire economy.
IIRC, no one at FDL has any problem with Dan Quayle and Cerberus’ investment in Chrysler going down the tubes.
The other very strong consensus here is that the US can’t afford to buy cars from the Chinese. If we let GM go Chapter 11, China will buy up the Volt technology for a song.
OT, helping GM and Ford makes a lot more sense than trying to keep the housing bubble inflated.
Any patented technologies of GM’s should be held as collateral for the bridge loans being offered to GM, and in the event of default, or BK, the technology remains the property of the American people (assuming they are not already encumbered).
promising to [fund]raise money seems very weak tea, even innocuous? And “up front” is total generality re any action.
Sure. Until he says “If you do this” then I’ll raise money.
It certainly MAY back the stench away from JJJ a step. But it’s still stench.
Just listened to the JJJ tape he convinced me that he not only did not contact Blago but that he is completely unaware of anyone contacting Blago for him. I thought he was clear, confident and honest. I thought he made a great case for himself. He wants the job and used this as an opportunity to make his case. He sold me “bleeping” graceful
If he is lying he sure sunk his ship.
ok, guys I couldn’t help it:
Blago in Servian translates to treasury. Maybe he was onto something.
“Son of Treasury” or something like that?
I’ll say. Throw in his father-in-law the alderman and things get even more interesting.
oops, that’s Serbian
In Croation, blagoj translates to cashier’s check! How good is that? All that $ up front, too!
“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.”
—–
Am I the only one who thinks that this quote was specifically cherry-picked by Fitz because it does NOT say who’s making the offer? Tact and subtlety do not seem to be Blago’s strong suits, and yet we have a quote referring to “an emissary” and “the other guy”. I suspect that Fitz knows who these two people are, even if they weren’t dumb enough to call on a tapped phone.
Q Part 1: “Am I the only one who thinks that this quote was specifically cherry-picked by Fitz”
A: Nope.
Part 2: because it does NOT say who’s making the offer?”
A: Mebbe so.
How about the following Alternative Parsing Blago?
[1] “we were approached” STOP: To this point, totally ambivalent.
[2] “Pay to Play” STOP:
[a] Now, if this phrase or its equivalent came from whoever it was who approached “we” – that would be very very bad for all involved.
[b] And if this phrase was intended to convey an unstated assumption to the effect that ‘Hey, someone approaches my people, they gotta be brain-dead and from out of state not to realize this is about Pay to Play, because every one in this state who’s still got a brain knows that’s what I’m all about’ – that would be very very bad for Blago, and as to whoever approached “we”, well, it would requiring a lot of ’splainin.
[c] But if this phrase was intended to convey an unstated assumption contrived completely from the hubris that walks like the Governor of Illinois and talks like the Governor of Illinois, then, well….indictment might not be the single biggest problem this particular lame duck is facing.
[3] “That, you know, he’d raise me 500 large” STOP
[oops; mixed up my Chicago references]
“That, you know, he’d raise me 500 grand”
[a] Now, if the whoever raised, intimated or agreed to pay 500 large to Blago, that would be very, very bad.
[b] Whereas if in the course of discussion someone raised in passing the Governor’s ambitions to run for re-re-election in 2010 and someone mentioned that in that context that it would not be unreasonable to expect that a senator of the same political persuasion would feel moved to help raise something in the range of half a mill, that would fall in the range of bad, through suspicious, to Chicago politics.
[c] And if in course of discussion on that same front someone on the Governor’s side mentioned that ‘we’ve been able to count on attributing about a half mill or so in campaign contributions per US Senator, so as you can see, we’d have a natural preference for the kind of candidate who’d be able to deliver that kind of support, meaning someone with crowd pull and deep pockets behind them’, well, then that would suggest someone sitting in the governor’s seat may have taken that conversation a little outside the context in which it occurred, n’est pas?
And thereafter, as Ms ew mentions, the phrasing as reported descends into blagogibberish.
I appreciate Ms ew’s reminding us that Fitzgerald’s draftsmanship of the Affidavit presented with the Complaint is explicit that ‘there’s more’ – and no doubt that’s true, for whatever that’s worth – but based just on what Fitz has shown us, this guy could well be, shall we say, a little disconnected from reality.
And in fairness, though there may be lot more weight to this, Blago is sure acting like there’s a few screws loose.
if they got portraits in the Illinois Governor’s Mansion, you can bet blagoff is talkin to em, ala dick nixon
o/t
thinking of y’all when I saw the snow vids this morning
Austin got theirs yesterday. hope all our safe
>showing us primarily the attempts to deal to Obama
Okay, but why do you think he is showing primarily that? I don’t get it.
Just because it’s a narrow field of vision, in keeping with Fitz’s general modus?
What, or who, are they signalling (to)?
Because Fitz knows he has enough evidence–either because people have come forward (Rahm?) or because he trusts those involved will be credible enough witnesses–that he was willing to use that as a basis for the affidavit.
He was not comfortable with what he had in JJJ. That’s because he doesn’t yet know the tie between the “emissary” and JJJ–or whether he can get to the conversation between the emissary and Blago, or contacts between the emissary and JJJ.
Ooo – you get a big ’star’ for this comment.
Lots of dons – also statesmen and politicians assuming those aren’t subcategories – like to insulate themselves by communicating through one or more ‘emissaries’ wherever possible, and when that’s the case, the trick for the prosecution side is to prove the particular emissary is speaking for the don. As to conspiracy [which, as you’ve noted is the under-particularized felony named in Count #1 of the Complaint], the terms of art involved are
[a] the one I alluded to in a response in an earlier thread, ‘acting to further one or more goals of the conspiracy”, a.k.a. ‘an act in furtherance’, and
[b] the principles of agency, often referred to as ‘acting through a co-conspirator’, which seems very often the case but nonetheless is unnecessary since its possible the agent might not be sufficiently aware of the existence of a conspiracy or of her or his role in the plot to be any more than an ‘innocent agent’.
A ready example here of a co-conspirator acting in furtherance would be if John Harris accepted directions from the Blagovernor to reach out to a supposed Contact Person of a particular Senate Candidate for the specific purpose of passing on an invitation to consider and return to Team Blago with an ‘offer’ to put the arm on the P-E’s transition team to parachute Blago into an apparently safe job under the control of the PE yet technically outside the incoming administration [SEIU would qualify] and arrange also for some cushy highly paid board appointment for Lady MacBlago.
For the purposes of proving the existence of a conspiracy to defraud the People of Illinois of the honest services of Blago and Harris, it wouldn’t be necessary to show that the approach to the Contact Person bore fruit, or even that it was all that realistic in terms of what the Contact Person’s principle, the Senate Candidate, might be able to achieve [although it would have to appear basically plausible to Team Blago]. It would be enough for Harris to proceed to act in a way that shows he accepted the directions, and so long as there was no other plausible explanation for his reaching out to the Contact Person to pass on Team Blago’s openness to such an arrangement – voila: conspiracy made out.
Let me tell you, there are lots of professional criminal defence lawyers, and even some professional prosecutors, who’ve had trouble grasping these concepts – but as usual you seem to have no problem picking up on them.
I sure hope the ‘emmissary’ is not JJJ’s dad….
I see where you’re coming from now. I had a different impression earlier.
Note that Rev. Jackson was reported to have ‘lawyered up’ today.
And Jim Montgomery specifically stated “Jesse Junior” in a context where “the Congressman” or “Congressman Jackson” might have been more appropriate. Did he start to say his client’s name and then realize he’d have to clarify, so that he didn’t leave himself open to a charge of lying in implying Jesse Sr. had not had any conversations either?
Oh fuck. Really? Do you have a link for that?
Anyway, I still don’t really understand why this had to happen inmediatamente.
The Senate seat seems no more urgent than it was a month ago. In fact less so, with the governor aimlessly adrift on the question, now courting Danny Davis, now meeting with JJJ. Nothing was imminent. Why not wait a week?
The efforts to extort from the hospital and from the tollway authority are ugly. Are they any uglier than all the other fundraising ploys Blagojevich has used? Couldn’t those things have waited till Monday? Or the day after Christmas?
I don’t see John McCormick as that urgent. If McCormick is fired, he’s the biggest martyr to the free press since Lovejoy (another Illinois newspaperman!). He gets a new job at another paper or a university somewhere very shortly. I’m not belittling this as an unfortunate outcome, but US Attorneys listen to uglier things all the time to pursue drug cases.
I also really don’t understand the McCormick aspect. Why give his name in the complaint? Why not “[Tribune Editor A]”? Why did Fitz, not prone to emotion, say he laid awake at night over the fate of McCormick? Perhaps Fitz just really likes him, through meeting with him at the Trib ed board. Maybe this was really timed to save McCormick, because Fitz was particularly respectful of him or something. But that doesn’t really square up with me.
Wouldn’t you want more info about the Trib connection? Wait a day or two, see if you can get a tip about a meeting time and then follow Harris and take a snapshot of him and his buddy TFA, to prove this wasn’t a figment of Harris’ imagination, an effort to mollify his insane boss? (Conceivably they’ve already done so, but …)
The obvious answer for the timing is because the wire was no longer useful, since it had been revealed. Except that it hadn’t. Blagojevich apparently believed that the Trib report referred to Wyma, and gleefully told people Wyma didn’t wear a wire, that the Trib had “defamed” Wyma. (Had the governor been checking?)
I suspect there’s something else at play, and I don’t know what.
Have you considered whether the Blago-Jackson meeting was taped?
The complaint is dated Sunday. But they waited until Tuesday to arrest Blago.
Also, keep in mind that Zell did not include the Cubbies in Monday’s bankruptcy filing. That may be related.
If what you are saying about JJJ and that Rev Jackson may have been the “emissary” then they “cheney’d” themselves. Do you really think that this is what this is all about. I guess I am a sucker….JJJ convinced me. If he lied during his press conference he “cheney’d” himself again.
Leen
I have no idea whether either of the Jacksons did anything wrong. The only thing we know that Fitz has proof of is that Blago SAYS someone approached him and offered to give donations in exchange for the seat. We don’t know if Blago represented that fairly, we don’t know who that person is, we don’t know how closely that person is tied to JJJ, and we don’t know if JJJ knew about it.
I don’t think JJJ’s press conference was effective at all from a PR standpoint. Getting up before a room of journalists only to tell them your defense lawyer says you can’t answer their questions is not a good move, from anyone. And his denial of involvement is VERY closely parsed:
He denies that he did not send anyone, but he doesn’t even deny knowing that someone went. So all he’s doing is saying he’s not responsible for any offers that were made, not that those offers weren’t made.
And it is entirely possible that someone else went–not either Jackson–and that JJJ was honestly kept in the dark about any dealings.
All I’m saying is that there is SOME evidence that SOMEONE offered a quid pro quo, though we have no idea whether someone tried to deliver it.
This response got posted while I was occupied typing #35; and once again you’ve struck on a possibly important distinction.
Say JJJ sent an emissary to Team Blago just to open up the lines of communication and maybe feel out Team Blago on the Blagovernor’s being receptive or not to JJJ being appointed – and nothing further, like being authorized to enter into negotiations or a bidding war.
Then at the meeting of emissaries, say the Team Blago mouthpiece were to make the kind of suggestion I describe in #35 – i.e. if your guy or your guy’s people can offer arrange for Blago to get this job and for Lady Blago to be appointed to a cushy board job for X bucks or higher, then that could do the trick to get your boy what he wants.
Now if JJJ’s emissary were to start talking turkey, that emissary would have a problem, but to that point JJJ would not. If JJJ’s emissary said something like ‘I don’t have any authority here; I gotta get back to you’, and then proceeded to report back to JJJ – – and then allofasudden diaries are being checked for availability and places and times are being confirmed, well … that would tend to perk up the ears of anyone involved on the investigation side.
thanks so much I do think I get what you are saying. But if Fitz has the goods on you why would anyone in their right mind keep digging?
And here’s another spanner in the works, maybe. If Rahm (or someone tight with Obama) did go to Fitz, where is the proof? In other words, was Rahm’s conversation with Blogo taped? By whose permission and when?
OT, but congrats to Mad Dog
http://www.salon.com/opinion/g…../10/reyes/
Seconded.
I’m getting the sense that Obama may well have been cooperating with Fitz even prior to 9/11 – or at least Rahm was. There can be no doubt that Rahm’s resources include total information awareness on all matters related to Chicago politics. It should further be noted that he has access to wiretap results other than those provided by US authorities (through Israeli Intelligence back channels). Assume that Rahm knows all, and these discussions were being had well prior to an Obama victory.
ooops – above was meant to say prior to election – not prior to 9/11.
OT: Just in girl’s body found 1/2 mile from Caylee’s grandparents home.
We need to take some of the military budget and put it straight into our economy. How can they justify rebuilding Iraq who has over 6 trillion dollars (oil profits) in various banks and have us fund their rebuilding. And that multidollar funding to Mexico for drugs, put that money in US. We have got to stop funding the world when we cannot afford our own unemployment benefits.
And Bernanke has studied the Great Depression. Maybe he studied it to repeat it?
I, for one, would not be at all surprised to hear that “Rev” Jackson was the “emmisary”. It really, really sounds like his kind of PUSHy Rainbow tactics.
my suggestions to TPM’s name-that-scandal quest:
– Spoil the Rod, Spare the Children(s’ Hospital)
– The Rod Deal
– The Pay to Prey Scandal
– The Price is Rod
– Big-Hair Todd, the Monster (obscure musical reference)
– DespeRoddo
– Desperately Seeking Something, Anything
Just please, for the sake of all that may be Holy – Do NOT suggest “Roddergate”
Please???
wish granted!
Fitz explained that the arrest couldn’t wait (because the press published the fact of the investigation), as the Children’s Hospital bill was on Blago’s desk. He flashed 3 or 4 exclamation points from his eyes when he mentioned the hospital, his throat got full. No one else in the room seemed to care as much about the hospital as Fitz.
crap. I need a timeline.
I read that giving Sen. Clinton’s seat to Carolyn Kennedy would free-up millions of dollars from Democratic Party funds for other Democratic candidates in New York to use in upcoming elections because Carolyn can fund her own future campaigns. There is little difference between that reasoning and an emissary saying they have the resources to raise funds for a governor.
Some of us are working on new methods to help.