WHY DID FITZGERALD ARREST THE GOVERNOR OF
UPDATE:
Yes, obviously arresting a governor packs maximum drama, makes an incomparably bigger splash than indicting him. –So is that why U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald arrested Blagojevich, instead of going to a grand jury to get an indictment against him?
This is weird. Looking at the charging document, and the circumstances of the case, I cannot see any reason why, legally, arrest—rather than indictment—was necessary. Governor Blagojevich is neither a flight risk nor accused of violence nor said to represent future dangerousness. In fact, he is at this very moment not in jail. A judge imposed bail of $4,500. So presumably whatever crime he was about to commit, if any, he can still commit, unless the Illinois Dems manage to forestall him.
N.b.: In no way is this writing to be construed as somehow justifying or even defending Blagojevich, whose actions mimic on a smaller scale the pay-to-play of Bush himself, who appointed Fitzgerald. Bush’s ambassadorships and other appointments for his “Rangers” and super-bundlers, his trillion-dollar slush fund in federal contracts for his supporters in the military-security sector, his acquiescence in election fraud—all would, as U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald said of Blagojevich, make Lincoln spin in his grave. That Blago’s acts and alleged acts take place on a much smaller scale than Bush’s pay-to-play on the geopolitical stage of international war crime does not justify them.
It is necessary to be on guard against the possibility of
political prosecutions, as the rightful controversy over Bush-Rove
politicization of the Department of Justice and political pressure on
To its credit, the management of the Tribune and the Tribune Company rejects the suggestion in the charging document that Blago pressured it to fire chosen writers. As several individuals have pointed out, including Tribune columnist Clarence Page on tonight’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, nobody has been fired from the Tribune editorial board. (Page called Blago’s purported comments about the paper “hot air.”)
Anyway, back to the question: Why was Blagojevich arrested—with all possible hoopla and maximum punch, at dawn today? I am as always no lawyer, but it would be more usual in criminal procedure, where no violence is foreseen, for a prosecutor to go to a grand jury and get an indictment. Why did Fitzgerald use instead a charging document and make an arrest, so lacking in functional value, as a lawyer friend of mine put it, but so high in political value?
Maybe the question answers itself. Stepping away from possible theory to actuality, even a non-lawyer can see the actual effects of this flaming arrest:
- It allows Fitzgerald to make public the tape-recorded and wiretapped conversations in which Blago demonstrates his un-wily concern about money and repeatedly uses the word Fitzgerald coyly redacted as “bleep” in today’s press conference.
- Thus it helps to destroy Blago politically.
- Not that there was much left of him politically anyway, of course; thus it seemingly is most useful in casting a putative shadow on Obama. The Rezko trial seems to have started out with this potential, but no go. Evidently the prosecutor bet on the wrong horse.
- It warms up the GOP, mollifies the hard right somewhat. Blagojevich can be their consolation prize for not ‘getting’ Obama. A friendly Larouchie told me, with the utmost cheerful certitude, that Fitzgerald was ‘sitting on’ a lot of material about Obama. The wingnuts held on to that fantasy right up to Election Day, and have not gotten over it.
- Speaking of Republicans, the arrest of Blagojevich has already been argued to make former Gov. Ryan look better in comparison—thus taking Bush off the hook somewhat in case of a presidential pardon of Ryan.
- It gets Fitzgerald himself into the news on a broader scale than has anything since the Libby trial. (I was among writers covering the Libby trial, and I still have the utmost respect for the work done there by the prosecution team.)
- Speaking of news, the charging document seems to be favorable to the Tribune Company just when bad news about the company has hit especially hard. (2009 would be a good year to have a strong Antitrust division in Justice, to prevent among other things big newspapers and other media outlets from owning each other—and from destroying themselves through excess debt, uh, leveraging.)
- It
knocks Al Gore’s meeting with President-Elect Obama, in
- It knocks that wonderful coming together of community support for the workers of Republic Windows and Doors, stiffed by their company, off the front page. So much for contractual good faith. There is some good news, though: Bank of America is coming through with some offer of credit for the company, and rightly so. Btw the original Bank of America was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s babies, business-wise, in the New Deal. Its clever and enterprising immigrant founder supported FDR, acc to historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
History demonstrates that the U.S. Attorney’s NDIL office is well capable of handling some elements in the media, particularly the right wing. Back during that lengthy trial of Tony Rezko, when the GOP and rightwing media outlets were all hot to trot over revelations supposedly to come about Obama, Fitzgerald instituted a media poison pill: Offered up for trial was the testimony of a potential witness talking about—not Obama, but Karl Rove. (The testimony was excluded.) Radio hosts dropped Rezko chatter like a hot potato.
More later.
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