Chicago Judge Says No to Blago Obama Subpoena

Former Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, surely didn't think any judge would allow Barack Obama to be subpoenaed in his political corruption trial. The subpoena request has been denied because the court believes Obama had nothing to materially impact the case.

Judge says No to Blago

From Breitbart:

U.S. District Judge James Zagel ruled Friday that lawyers for Blagojevich had not produced sufficient evidence that Obama would have anything material to say on the witness stand.

Here are snippets of previously redacted portions of the subpoena. What do you think?

9. Yet, despite President Obama stating that no representatives of his had any part of any deals, labor union president told the FBI and the United States Attorneys that he spoke to labor union official on November 3, 2008 who received a phone message from Obama that evening....Labor union president took that to mean that labor union official was to be the one to deliver the message on behalf of Obama that Senate Candidate B was his pick.(Labor union president 302, February 2, 2009, p. 7)

12. On November 5, 2008, Blagojevich told John Harris that labor union official “talked to Barack Obama, wants to come and see me.” Blagojevich then told Harris that labor union official “was very explicit with me, “I talked to Barack about the Senate seat. Can I come and see ya? Can I do it tomorrow?’ I said, sure.” (Blagojevich Home Phone Call # 261).

13. A supporter of Presidential Candidate Obama suggested that she talk to the wife of Governor Blagojevich about Senate Candidate B for Senator. (Valerie Jarrett 302, December 19, 2008). Supporter of Presidential Candidate Obama is mentioned in a phone call on November 3, 2008, having offered “fundraising” in exchange for Senate Candidate B for senator (Blagojevich Home Phone Call # 149).

17. President-elect Obama also spoke to Governor Blagojevich on December 1, 2008 in Philadelphia. On Harris Cell Phone Call # 139, John Harris and Governor’s legal counsel discuss a conversation Blagojevich had with President-elect Obama. The government claims a conspiracy existed from October 22, 2008 continuing through December 9, 2008.6 That conversation is relevant to the defense of the government’s theory of an ongoing conspiracy. Only Rod Blagojevich and President Obama can testify to the contents of that conversation. The defense is allowed to present evidence that corroborates the defendant’s testimony.

18. President-elect Obama also suggested Senate Candidate A to Governor Blagojevich. John Harris told the FBI and the United States Attorneys that he spoke to President’s Chief of Staff on November 12, 2008. Harris took notes of the conversation and wrote that President’s Chief had previously worked as Blagojevich's press secretary. Obama agreed of Staff told Harris that Senate Candidate A was acceptable to Obama as a senate pick. (Harris handwritten notes, OOG1004463) President’s Chief of Staff told the FBI that “he could not say where but somewhere it was communicated to him that” Senate Candidate A was a suggested candidate viewed as one of the four “right” candidates “by the Obama transition team.” (Rahm Emanuel 302, p. 5, December 20, 2008). Harris told Blagojevich Obama’s suggestion on November 12, 2008 (Blagojevich Home Phone Call # 539).

19. President-elect Obama was also involved in other senate candidate choices. On December 8, 2008, John Harris’ secretary’s call log noted President’s Chief of Staff called at 10:47 am and wrote “needs to talk to you asap” (Harris 302, February 20, 2009). President’s Chief of Staff told the FBI that he had a conversation discussing the Senate seat with Obama on December 7, 2008 in Obama’s car. President’s Chief of Staff told the FBI “Obama expressed concern about Senate Candidate D being appointed as Senator. [President’s Chief of Staff] suggested they might need an expanded list to possibly include names of African Americans that came out of the business world. [President’s Chief of Staff] thought he suggested Senate Candidate E who was the head of the Urban League and with President’s Chief of Staff’s suggestion." (President’s Chief of Staff, 302, 12-20-08).

22. However, the defense has a good faith belief that Mr. Rezko, President Obama’s former friend, fund-raiser, and neighbor told the FBI and the United States Attorneys a different story about President Obama. In a recent in camera proceeding, the government tendered a three paragraph letter indicating that Rezko “has stated in interviews with the government that he engaged in election law violations by personally contributing a large sum of cash to the campaign of a public official who is not Rod Blagojevich. … Further, the public official denies being aware of cash contributions to his campaign by Rezko or others and denies having conversations with Rezko related to cash contributions. … Rezko has also stated in interviews with the government that he believed he transmitted a quid pro quo offer from a lobbyist to the public official, whereby the lobbyist would hold a fundraiser for the official in exchange for favorable official action, but that the public official rejected the offer. The public official denies any such conversation. In addition, Rezko has stated to the government that he and the public official had certain conversations about gaming legislation and administration, which the public official denies having had.”10

Blago didn't have a prayer with his subpoena request.

Blago Greta van Susteren: Blago There is a Smoking Gun Transcript and Video

The former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, better known as "Blago" was on Greta's On the Record last night. Blagojevich is asking a court to subpoena Barack Obama for his coming trial. It is alleged that Blago attempted "to sell" Illinois U.S. Senator Barack Obama's Illinois senate seat. He was videotaped and wiretapped. The prosecution wants to allow only certain video tapes. Blago wants them all admitted into evidence and says they will prove him innocent. There is a "smoking gun" he says. This was an intriguing interview. See the transcript below the video.

Rod Blagojevich

Blago on Great's On The Record: There is a smoking Gun (video)

Rush Transcript Fox News:

ROD BLAGOJEVICH, FORMER ILLINOIS GOVERNOR: Thanks for being here.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right, Governor, you're in a little bit of a fix. You've this trial coming up June 3rd, and a lot of pre-trial matters have come to light recently and I want to talk to you about -- let's start first with the tapes. The prosecution has wiretapped you, has tapes of you, and there's a dispute over what's going to be played in court. What's the dispute?


BLAGOJEVICH: Well, they taped my conversations for six weeks. Our government came in to the sanctity of this home, actually, and put the wiretaps on these telephones and a lot of other telephones.
I've taken the position from the very beginning that I'm innocent of everything and anything they're falsely accusing me of, and that a lot of the truth can be found in those tapes. And from the beginning, I've said, Play all the tapes.

My lawyers were instructed by me to challenge the government. We waived the opportunity to challenge the tapes, happily did that, and challenged the government to say that, Allow both sides to play any tape they want. They should play anything they want to play in court and let us play any tape that we want to play in court. The government declined to comment, and then they've recently gone into court, the snuck into court to try to get the judge to rule that all the tapes should not be played.


This case in so many ways is upside down. Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, invades the sanctity of my home. The government is in here looking at those private conversations. Those are his tapes and he's going to court to suppress his own tapes. And I'm the one saying play them all because I note the truth is on those tapes and will show I did nothing wrong.

VAN SUSTEREN: You say he snuck into court. You had no notice the prosecutor was going into court and say we only want to play these tapes and not all the tapes?

BLAGOJEVICH: The way the motion was written by the government with footnotes and buried in the body of a motion that was filled with a lot of other things was an incipient request to suggest that not all the tapes be heard. They even misled and said the judge ruled that all the tapes wouldn't be played which was not the case at the time they filed the motion.

VAN SUSTEREN: Has your lawyer heard all these tapes?

BLAGOJEVICH: We had tapes for months.

VAN SUSTEREN: You have copies of the tapes?

BLAGOJEVICH: Yes. Let me say this. I've been consistent from the beginning. From the moment I was falsely accused, I said long before we had access to the tapes, play all the tapes, because I know who I am and I would not do the things they are suggesting that I did.

And I know that notwithstanding some language on the tapes, the use of pro fan, which I have apologized for. I didn't know --

VAN SUSTEREN: That is not a crime. Do you have any idea how many hours of tapes the prosecution intends to play at your June 3rd trial?

BLAGOJEVICH: I don't know that. But what I do know is they have in a very dishonest way taken selective snippets of conversations out of context, purposely misleading the people and purposely providing false information.

VAN SUSTEREN: They've identified what tapes they are going to play? You know what they are going to play?

BLAGOJEVICH: No. They've quoted some of them. They've released a couple of them. And they've done it in a way where snippets of conversations were taken out of context.

And if you are allowed to listen to the breadth of the conversation -- again, I can't comment on what is on the tapes. The very government that taped me went into court to say I can't what is on them nor can I allow to you take a look at them.

VAN SUSTEREN: There's a gag order ton this part of it, the contents of the tape?

BLAGOJEVICH: That's correct. And the government sought that gag order. They've been free to take snippets of conversation out whenever they choose to do it, and it is designed to mislead the public.

VAN SUSTEREN: Hasn't the judge said, OK Governor Blagojevich, you identify what tapes you want heard and I'll consider it so it is not a complete bar at this point?

BLAGOJEVICH: That's correct. The judge seems to be a fair and thoughtful man. He's obviously a very smart, intelligent man who understands and knows the law. So he has said two things. He said one publicly that if I testify that he wail will you us to play the tapes we want to play.

VAN SUSTEREN: Just if you testify, not for a doctrine of complete? Let's say hypothetically, a tape is put on that has half a thought, and it is your position that half of thought falsely convoys a message. Are you allowed to play the entire thought without having to take the witness stand?

BLAGOJEVICH: I don't know that yet. The judge has said that if I testify, which will, by the way, he will allow us to play the tapes that we ask for. This is as I've been told by my attorneys.
And the judge said in the last court day, and I was there because I challenged the prosecutor to be there too, to explain why he's preventing all the tapes from being heard except the tapes that he went out and got.

But the judge said that -- instructed my lawyers to submit to him the different tapes that we would be requesting to be heard in court. And so, I'm cautiously optimistic and hopeful he will say yes.

VAN SUSTEREN: What is the prosecution's opposition? Do they think you are going to waste a lot of time and play 400 inconsequential conversations and bore the jury to death or do they have a more sinister purpose to evade, confuse, or do something with the jury?

BLAGOJEVICH: I fervently believe the prosecution is trying to cover- up their misdeeds.

VAN SUSTEREN: Which misdeeds?

BLAGOJEVICH: That they arrested a sitting governor and falsely accused him of things he didn't do and did it in a super sensational press conference on December the ninth, 2008, this is what Mr. Fitzgerald did. And e used and quoted from the tapes from snippets of the tapes to suggest that was the basis for arresting a governor in a state like Illinois -- unprecedented.

And he did it, and he said, and I'm quoting, that he was doing to "stop a crime spree." The reality is when people hear the whole truth and hear what was on those conversations, the days and weeks leading up to those acts by the government, by the prosecutors, there was no crime spree. He lied.

VAN SUSTEREN: Why did he do that? Just for the sake of lying or something more sinister? Not that lying isn't sinister.

BLAGOJEVICH: I believe the effort to prevent all the tapes being played is designed to keep justice from being heard in court as it is to cover-up their wrongdoing and misdeeds.

To suggest you should -- to arrest a sitting governor, to state in a press conference where the whole world is listening that you have a governor trying to sell a Senate seat for money which the allegation he made at the press conversation that he had heard conversations over the telephone, had to come in at 6:00 in the morning in my home where my little girls are sleeping, invade the privacy of our home to say they had to stop the crime spree before it happened is just a flat out lie.

The tapes show what the truth is. I have said from the beginning play all the tapes. Why is my accuser is trying to prevent the full truth from being heard? I believe part of it is because he's covering up the fact that he told this big lie that foreseeably led to a chain of events that would remove a governor from office that would undo the will of a people, undo an election, and he doesn't ever want anybody to know that's what he did.

There's a smoking gun on these tapes, and that smoking gun is directed and pointed at the prosecutor.

VAN SUSTEREN: You are in essence accused of selling the Senate seat vacated by President Obama. Everyone that you ever had a conversation with about that Senate seat, is there any way you could have spoken to someone and not have it tapped. Did you have a conversation in the car, for instance, with the other person?

BLAGOJEVICH: I had a conversation with Senator Dick Durbin.

VAN SUSTEREN: Where?

BLAGOJEVICH: In my office in Chicago.

VAN SUSTEREN: Was your office bugged?

BLAGOJEVICH: They say it wasn't. So Senator Durbin and I, we spoke about the Senate seat, and he offered to be a go between. I decided that my first choice I was going to try to appoint the daughter of my political nemesis, the House speaker was blocking a public works bill that would create 500,000 jobs he was blocking, health care for over 300,000 families, working people in writing.
And I wanted a guarantee in writing to not raise taxes on people.

VAN SUSTEREN: They say they didn't bug your office.

BLAGOJEVICH: The office downtown Chicago, that conversation with Senator Durbin, my recollection was there. Bu I spoke to Senator Harry Reid --

VAN SUSTEREN: On the phone?

BLAGOJEVICH: On the telephone from my campaign office. I spoke to Harry Reid about the Senate seat, enlisting his help. Senator Menendez, the head of the Senate campaign committee for the Democrats, who expressed an interest --

VAN SUSTEREN: On the phone?

BLAGOJEVICH: On the telephone, working out what was going to be what I called the best political deal in the political history second to the Louisiana Purchase, because I was going to hold my nose and appoint someone who I thought was working against the people in many ways, but notwithstanding, her father was creating legislation gridlock.

VAN SUSTEREN: Who else did you talk to?

BLAGOJEVICH: I spoke to Rahm Emanuel. I spoke to several people.
VAN SUSTEREN: Who are the sort of the main players in this discussion of the Senate seat? Who did you talk to -- I'm trying to figure out who is going to be on tape and who is not.

BLAGOJEVICH: I can't tell you that

VAN SUSTEREN: Who do you remember talking to, to give me some idea?

BLAGOJEVICH: Again, I spoke to Senator Reid, Senator Menendez, then Congressman Rahm Emanuel days after the election right here from this room, and several other people about potential scenarios on the Senate seat.

VAN SUSTEREN: A lot of the conversations about the Senate seat maybe some that aren't on tape but a lot are or should be because they are done by telephone?

BLAGOJEVICH: Most of the conversations I was engaged in during that six week period had been tape recorded.
VAN SUSTEREN: You mentioned President Obama. You have filed notice to the court that would you like to subpoena him. And you have enumerated a number of reasons. What is it that you think Senator Obama -- President Obama, then-Senate Obama, could offer you at trial on June 3rd that would be helpful to your case?

BLAGOJEVICH: I think President Obama can help prove my innocence.

VAN SUSTEREN: How?

BLAGOJEVICH: Let me say this, before anybody says I'm interested in bringing everybody down with me. That's completely not the case. I've done nothing wrong.

What I'm interested in is for the whole truth to come out that neither did I do anything wrong, President Obama didn't do anything wrong, the senators that I talked to didn't do anything wrong either. And so they should come into court and tell the truth as they know it. Swear on the Holy Bible as I'm looking forward to do --

VAN SUSTEREN: I got that, but what is it that -- the judge is going to say how is President Obama going to help your case? He is going to ask that flat out to your lawyer. Tell me how.

BLAGOJEVICH: Again, a lot of evidence and information that I'm prohibited by court order because it is under seal to tell you. So there's relevance connected to that.

VAN SUSTEREN: In the pleading your lawyers talked about a conversation in December '08, a conversation. President Obama called you?

BLAGOJEVICH: Again, I can't -- because of the court order and me following the law I can't comment specifically on those telephone conversations. My lawyers filed motions in court. They redacted, as far as I understand, they redacted the substance of those. There was a computer glitch apparently that made some of this stuff unwittingly public -- the media found it.

VAN SUSTEREN: You see that still as part of the seal?

BLAGOJEVICH: It is still part of seal.

VAN SUSTEREN: What is the breadth of the gag order? What can you or can't talk about?

BLAGOJEVICH: I can't talk about the evidence that we have and we know that is currently under seal, which is as far as I know everything. I can tell you independently what I recollect.

VAN SUSTEREN: Can you tell me independently what recollect about the conversation you had with President Obama in December of '08?

BLAGOJEVICH: Again, I don't think I can. I don't think I should in that particular case. President Obama and I, I can recall independently, spoke at the governor's event at the Independence Hall in Philadelphia days before I was arrested.

VAN SUSTEREN: In person?

BLAGOJEVICH: In person. And a lot of other governors --

VAN SUSTEREN: Was it about the Senate seat, just generally?

BLAGOJEVICH: I don't think I should say what we talked about. It will all eventually --

VAN SUSTEREN: If it is not about the Senate seat, I have a hard time figuring out why he would be a witness that the court is going to allow you to call.

The court ought to let you play any tapes that in any way exculpate you or even tend to. They should let you call witnesses that will help you in your defense. The one thing the court won't do is let you call someone who doesn't have anything to benefit you.

BLAGOJEVICH: Again, there's information and there's evidence that is under seal. And I'm prohibited by a court order from specifically talking about those things --

VAN SUSTEREN: Even from what you recollect?

BLAGOJEVICH: I feel like if I start going into substance of conversations it is a slippery slope and I might inadvertently cross the line.

VAN SUSTEREN: What is the line? What does the gag order say you can and can't do?

BLAGOJEVICH: Again, the evidence that we have access to that we had the chance to review, the taped conversations.

VAN SUSTEREN: That's out, you can't talk about the content of those.

BLAGOJEVICH: The FBI interviews. The statements of potential witnesses, all those things are not something that would be appropriate for me to comment on.

Let me also say in the case of President Obama and me, and again, let me be very clear, I know absolutely no wrongdoing that the president was involved in. And I know I was involved in no wrongdoing. But there is a common political support of ours named Tony Rezko who is relevant to both me and President Obama.

Again he wrote a letter to a federal sentencing judge --

VAN SUSTEREN: Is Rezko helpful to you at your June 3rd trial?

BLAGOJEVICH: I can't comment about the specifics of the case.
VAN SUSTEREN: Is he on your witness list?

BLAGOJEVICH: I'll leave that for the lawyers to discuss.

VAN SUSTEREN: The president is not going to appear on some wiretap?

BLAGOJEVICH: I'm telling you from my reelection I don't recall talking to President Obama during that period on the telephone.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Obama Subpoenaed by Blagojevich? Blagojevich Defense to Subpoena Obama

The Blagojevich defense team has asked a federal judge to issue a subpoena to Barack Obama. This is breaking news, and details are few. More as available.

From WGN9 in Chicago:

The court filing contained numerous blacked-out sections, but a computer glitch made them visible. (Here is an unredacted version of the motion. Click on the blacked-out sections; the unredacted material will appear below.)

No. 7 in the document below, alleges that Rod Blagojevich would appoint "Senate Candidate B" to the seat vacated by Barack Obama in exchange for being named the administration's Health and Human Services Secretary.

Others talking about an Obama subpoena:
A Chicagoan's Conservative Chronicles
National Review Online - The Feed






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