The defense team for former Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich has a message for the federal prosecutors trying Blagojevich: \u201cPlay \u2018em all\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Defense attorney Sam Adam Jr says he wants all 500 hours of taped phone conversations, collected by FBI wiretaps, to be played at Blagojevich\u2019s criminal trial scheduled to start in June.\u00a0\u00a0 Adam says, \u201cWe are very interested in getting the tapes played before a jury.\u201d\u00a0 He also says the defense team meets with Blagojevich four to five times a week to go over every minute of the audio tapes that will be presented as evidence at trial.<\/p>\n
At least one or two of those phone conversations were between Blagojevich and then Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel, now White House Chief of Staff to President Obama. Another Blagojevich\u00a0 defense attorney characterized the conversations between Blagojevich and Emanuel as \u201cnot damaging stuff, \u201c but the attorney does expect Emanuel to be called to testify as a witness for the government during the trial. The defense has no plans to subpoena President Obama to testify, but it did file a motion recently asking the government to turn over statements made to the FBI by Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama and others in the Obama Administration, surrounding any contact with Blagojevich regarding his pay to play schemes. Sam Adam Jr. told reporters, \u201cThey (the US Attorneys Office) have no reason not to give it to us. We are trying to do what\u2019s right for my client. The Governor is being treated like Tony Soprano. The government\u2019s response to our motion said they fear intimidation of witnesses. There will be no intimidation of witnesses. That\u2019s just another way of saying we have the stuff you want but we are not going to give it to you.\u201d\u00a0 The government is required to release all discovery to the defense, in order for the defense team to prepare for trial. One of Blago\u2019s defense attorneys said typically the government would turn over discovery two to three weeks prior to the trial, and they are putting up a fight to release it any earlier.\u00a0 Today Judge James Zagel said he will issue a ruling on the defense\u2019s motion regarding discovery early next week.<\/p>\n
Assistant US Attorney Reid Schar said today he expects a grand jury to vote by the end of next week to return a new indictment against Blagojevich.\u00a0 The new indictment will likely look similar to the current corruption charges against Blagojevich.\u00a0 If Blagojevich is re-indicted on newer charges he would appear in federal court on February 10th<\/sup>, to enter a new plea in the case. With another indictment looming, Blagojevich\u2019s lawyers maintain their client is innocent and has nothing to hide, \u201cthe Governor has been very clear. He wants everything out in the open,\u201d says Sam Adam Jr.\u00a0 The June 3rd<\/sup> start date for the Blagojevich trial all hinges on the US Supreme Court.\u00a0 The high court is reviewing the honest services fraud law. Much of the government\u2019s case against Blagojevich is based on allegations that he deprived Illinois citizens of\u00a0 honest services.\u00a0 An opinion from the Supreme Court is likely to come in May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The defense team for former Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich has a message for the federal prosecutors trying Blagojevich: \u201cPlay \u2018em all\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Defense attorney Sam Adam Jr says he wants all 500 hours of taped phone conversations, collected by FBI wiretaps, to be played at Blagojevich\u2019s criminal trial scheduled to start in June.\u00a0\u00a0 Adam says, \u201cWe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4756,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4756"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}