![\"\"](\"http:\/\/chicagopressrelease.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/rod-blagojevich-300x199.jpg\" "\\"rod-blagojevich\\"")
CHICAGO — As Rod Blagojevich pleaded not guilty Wednesday to corruption charges in a revised indictment, his attorneys filed a motion seeking to play as many of the hundreds of secret recordings as they want at his trial.<\/p>\nCHICAGO — As Rod Blagojevich pleaded not guilty Wednesday to corruption charges in a revised indictment, his attorneys filed a motion seeking to play as many of the hundreds of secret recordings as they want at his trial.<\/p>\n
Blagojevich’s lawyers wrote that the former Illinois governor is “desirous that the recordings be heard in open court by the jury, believing as he does that a full airing of the recordings will establish his innocence of every count in the indictment.”<\/p>\n
The former governor and his lawyers have long suggested their best chance of beating the charges in the case would be for the public to hear all of the conversations captured by the government and decide for themselves whether the talk constitutes public corruption or just typical political wrangling.<\/span><\/p>\n When investigators tapped Blagojevich’s phones, the phones of some of his associates and bugged his campaign offices in late 2008, they captured some 500 hours of conversations that have since been turned over to the defense.<\/p>\n In a statement after the hearing, Blagojevich said he’s challenging prosecutors and demanding all the tapes be played. “Play the truth and nothing but the truth” he said “Play all the tapes.”<\/p>\n While he may have a constitutional right to try to have the tapes suppressed, Blagojevich said, “I’m not going to hide behind my lawyers, nor will I hide behind technicalities in the law to try to block these tapes from being heard.”<\/p>\n Blagojevich said he told his lawyers to file the petition with the court “so every second, every minute, every hour that the government secretly taped me is provided to both sides to be heard and played in court.”<\/p>\n Blagojevich said the government should join in the motion if it is on the side of truth and justice.<\/p>\n “And if this was a crime spree like you claim it was, then don’t hide behind technicalities, play all the tapes,” he said.<\/p>\n His attorney, Sam Adam Jr., said the defense was not specifically demanding that all 500 hours of tapes be played, despite what his client had just said, but that either side should be able to whatever it wants to.<\/p>\n “We are saying either side can play any minute of any tape that they wish to play,” Adam said, and that means either side could play them all if they want to.<\/p>\n Adam said any relevant tape should be played, but not conversations of Blagojevich talking to someone about “the Atlanta Hawks,” or other unrelated conversations.<\/p>\n “We’re talking about any tape that has to do with this trial,” Adam said. “Any tape that can show either the modus operandi or the mental state of any of the subjects in this case, play them.”<\/p>\n Adam said he recognizes that, under the law, Blagojevich’s legal team does not have to prove the ex-governor innocent.<\/p>\n “We don’t have to prove Rod innocent, but the tapes will,” he said. “That’s the point here.”<\/p>\n Adam then noted what Blagojevich had told the judge in court. “He didn’t enter a plea of ‘not guilty,’ he entered a plea of ‘innocent,”’ Adam said.<\/p>\n “And you know why he entered that plea of innocence? Because he is.”<\/p>\n Blagojevich and Adam both repeated the former governor’s promise that he will take the stand at the upcoming trial.<\/p>\n Prosecutors have alleged that Blagojevich sought to enrich himself and some close to him by leveraging the powers of his office, and that he attempted to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama to the highest bidder.<\/p>\n Blagojevich has contended that what he actually planned to do with the seat is attempt to appoint Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan in a political arrangement.<\/p>\n Read the original article from Herald & Review<\/a>.<\/p>\n Blagojevich pleads not guilty, asks for ‘full airing’ of secret tapes<\/a> originally published on Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n CHICAGO — As Rod Blagojevich pleaded not guilty Wednesday to corruption charges in a revised indictment, his attorneys filed a motion seeking to play as many of the hundreds of secret recordings as they want at his trial. Blagojevich’s lawyers wrote that the former Illinois governor is “desirous that the recordings be heard in open […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303125","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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