The motion to throw Pat Fitzgerald and ALL of his AUSA’s off the Blagojevich case was unsealed. In it, Blago’s lawyer accuses PatFitz of all kinds of violations of law and prosecutorial ethics for quoting from the wiretap tapes during the press conference announcing Blago’s arrest and the unsealed criminal complaint.
When you get a Title 3 wiretap authorization, you go to the judge with your warrant application and an affidavit from a case agent laying out the probable cause that supports your application. If the judge agrees, he issues a court order telling what you can tap, for how long, what minimization rules should apply and where the tapes are permitted to be stored. This last bit is important, because the tapes are supposed to be under the "control" of the court at all times. However, not every judge has an evidence vault (or space in his vault) to hold the tapes, so often the order tells the USA to to keep the tapes in the USA’s big vault — but they are still under the control of the court.
If you want to use the tapes, let’s say to give them to another jurisdiction to present to a grand jury there, you have to make a motion to the judge to "unseal" the tapes. Otherwise, the tapes are considered sealed.
Follow me so far? Blago’s lawyer says that Pat quoted from the tapes without getting them unsealed first. That would be a pretty big mistake. Maybe even a career ending mistake.
Except for one teensy weensy thing.
To arrest some one on a complaint, you need a criminal complaint and an arrest warrant issued from a judge. Same process as the Wiretap warrant. The case agent submits an affidavit, under seal — because if it was a public document the bad guy might get wind of it and flee — which lays out the probable cause for arrest. The proposed criminal complaint is attached, under seal, so the judge can see if the probable cause matches up with the proposed charges in the complaint. The arrest warrant is issued with conditions for its execution.
Because the defendant has a constitutional right to know the charges against him and to contest the probable cause for his arrest pre-trial, the complaint and the underlying affidavit get unsealed when the defendant is arrested. We know the Blago arrest warrant affidavit was unsealed b/c Blago’s lawyer had a copy in hand to use as an exhibit to his motion.
In that judicially unsealed affidavit, are the very quotes that Pat used at the press conference. Yeah, the unsealed quotes, which Blago’s lawyer knows are unsealed because otherwise he would not have the affidavit himself.
I checked the affidavit against the press conference transcript (also appended as an exhibit to Blago’s motion). Pat did not quote one word in that press conference that was not in the unsealed affidavit.
So, either Blago’s lawyer is crazy, or I am.
Please, go check for yourselves and let me know if my mental health is OK.
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Loosehead! Your mental health looks fine from here.
Rezko!
Sounds like Blago needs a new lawyer or was this an attempt to stall for time because they had nothing else?
I know I’m an outcast here.
Which is OK.
But Blago is a minor league distraction. And Fitz is worthless.
Why didn’t Fitz go after the big criminals — Cheney and Bush?
I know, because Fitz is a politically sensitive prosecutor.
Suggestion: Pick your enemies. Pick them well.
I’m sure Blago will use that in his defense.
Blago and his lawyer are both nuts,bonkers loony tunes,and just plain crazy!!
Isn’t this the kitchen sink defense? You know throw everything you can think of no matter how crazy and hope that something sticks. And I suppose too that this may be trying to play to potential jurors down the road and get the suggestion out there that something funny was going on here. The problem is that I don’t think the machinations of Blago’s attorney are going to stick with any jurors.
Something similar went on during the impeachment hearings. Blago’s lawyer made it sound like judicial process was not being followed sort of forgetting that impeachment is a political process so rules that might be fine to invoke in a regular court had no bearing on what the legislators were doing.
Yeah, I got the feeling that his lawyer had seen to many episodes of Boston Legal and wanted to emulate Denny Crane.
I asked this back during the Scoots Libby trial, and one of our gracious hosts here, Christy, had a lengthy explanation for this (can’t remember it offhand). Seems there was a simple explanation and Fitz had nothing to do with it.
He couldn’t go after Cheney precisely because of Libby’s obstruction and lying.
Chris Mathews just pointed out that Blago is getting impeached for healthcare.
Rep Mendoza is in trouble she is saying Blago is getting impeached for holding up another hospital for the Burbs. Because it hurts people’s access to healthcare.
Lets see Downstate or Chicago get a new hospital for poor people.
The poor Burbs are suffering from such a lack a healthcare/s
That always seemed like a cop-out. Yes, that’s true to a point, but didn’t they have enough to start a separate inquiry for at least Cheney?
It seems like there was some other reason it stopped at Scoots.
I, for one, like the way you think.
Fitz doesn’t have much of a case from what I can tell. He might want to save face and get back to important matters, hanging a treason rap on Cheney (I know he’s chafing to get at it).
I think the blogosphere, (you think blago gets a smile when he hears that?) the left in particular, is missing a golden opportunity to point out the vast difference in media coverage of a sleazy IL gov and the nearly absent critical look at the bush administration.
Good one
Because when you take aim at the king, you’d better be sure you can kill the king.
Things would be MUCH worse if Fitz had tried and failed. He took a case he thought he could win to trial.
You’re gonna fault him for using good judgment?
I agree Fitzgerald should have gone after others involved in this, most notably Rove.
yeah, but if you read the motion, it accuses Pat of all kinds of malfeasance. In NY we call that slander per se. It’s when you accuse someone of not being fit to do their profession. You don’t have prove malice, just untruth.
This was a really personal attack, and one which it is obvious from the document sin Blago’s camp’s possession, had no merit whatsoever.
It may be sanctionable.
The NewsHour is beginning what it calls a year long examination of economic reporting. It is now doing a story on why economists didn’t predict the housing bubble. I admit to frustration over this because it is playing up the “No one could have predicted” excuse. But this is pure BS this was eminently foreseeable years in advance. I mean all of the bases are being covered but those who ignored the signs are not being nailed for their lame ass excuses.
It is all very reasonable sounding but it is BS.
So it wasn’t illegal for Fitz to quote from wiretaps at the press conference. Was it a good idea?
I thought this whole Blago investigation started with asking for donations for contractors bidding on a toll road and fell into the selling the senate seat because of the wire taps?
At some point that crew really needs to get hit with a letter campaign… or something which might cause a stir or temporary wake up call.
Yes, it was a good idea. The affidavit was public knowledge but it’s like 70 something pages long. Do you expect that Trad media was going to read the whole thang and explain why Blago’s own words hang him?
Nope, the press conference is a way to educate the American people, so they can have confidence that it is not some partisan witch hunt. When they hear the actual words of the Governor, they know the basis for the prosecutions actions.
It’s called transparency, and I believe in transparency
But probably won’t be. I see it as stupid theatrics that will go nowhere but the judicial equivalent of a wastepaper basket.
It’s not transparency though. It’s cherry picking from thousands of hours of evidence.
blago is driving the lawyer to try and muddy the water, stall, create a diversion for some reason. it’s a bonehead move. what is the rationale? blago is pretty crafty. ideas?
Hey, I read it, but I get your point. Why would journalists read something germane to what they were reporting on? The truth is that the complaint was far more damning than the news conference because the instances just go on and on. Fitzgerald had a presser for the Libby case as well. And I agree completely that it is to educate the public about the public’s business.
Several economists and commentators predicted the housing bubble. James Howard Kuntsler, though not an economist has been screaming this for years.
Swopa’s up
Obama’s $350 Billion “Welcome Wagon”… Courtesy of George Bush?
David Brooks on the NewsHour trying his best to obfuscate on the Obama stimulus. I have major problems with the stimulus as currently proposed and even wrote an oxdown diary on it today but Brooks is just being an idiot on it. He doesn’t understand the basics but when has that ever stopped him from talking?
Don’t forget, Team Blago gets all those 1,000s of hours of evidence in discovery. If Pat had a problem, he would be a fool to do what he did at the Presser.
Does he strike you as stupid?
Not knowing about the housing bubble is an example of the Big Lie. If you are going to lie make it so big that no one will question it either because they are stunned or don’t know how to respond.
I think Blago is betting on Trad Media doing their usual lazy job and not bothering to find out what going on with the motion, and only focus on the sensational language and accusations in the motion.
I think iti is similar to his current strategy to try to humiliate the rest of the Dems.
Basically, I may go down, but I can make you suffer along with me
I don’t often defend Greenspan, but remember how everybody jumped down his throat when he cautioned against “irrational exuberance” in the markets?
not good enought fer blago. there is a method to his madness, imo. what if he had a judge in his pocket? what could he do with that?
Except he made that statement back on December 5, 1996 fourteen pages into a speech and it was posed as a question.
http://www.irrationalexuberance.com/definition.htm
And I should point out that this exuberance was in large part a product of Greenspan’s own easy credit policies at the Fed. By pumping cheap money into markets Greenspan underwrote both the dot com and then the housing bubbles. Maybe he should have toned down his own exuberance.
A while back (pre-PatFitz) there was a big judicial corruption scandal in Illinois. Theinvestigation was called “Operation Grey lord”.
The feds bugged a table in a diner where a bunch of judges used to eat most days. T’was f’ugly.
It’s not impossible
Yeah, but Hugh, my point is anyone who said anything negative about hthe US economy before the crisis, was treatied like a conspiracy theorist or a traitor out to undermine AMeric’s greatness.
Blago’s lawyer is Exhbit 9,436,789 of what Al Gore has called “The Assault on Reason”.
In the interests of winning a case for his client, he’ll claim that a USAG is acting illegally. And that’s the message the media will carry.
All the more reason to thank you for clarifying here, and hope that your clarification reaches a wider readership and even a news show host.
Yes but the question to deconstruct is who was saying this and why were the MSM and politicians so eager to repeat it.
i’ve never tried to track this down, but one question that has been the bugging me is this – was the easy money either 1) a necessary response or 2) as possible response to clinton’s trade policies and the resulting downward pressure on manufactured goods (see race to the bottom)? iow, did “free trade” make the easy money possible without the kind of inflation one would have otherwise expected absent the “free trade” regime?
any thoughts on that?
Oh, but if you recall, lhp, America was not nearly as great in 1996, an electoral year to boot, as it has been since 2001.
In particular, it has been the case in such electoral years of the past that the financial classes which often have sway in the Federal Reserve precincts deem the American people in need of the iron hand of discipline, that they may be reminded who their daddy really is.
Does anyone remember at which of Clinton’s state of the union addresses Greenspan was noted as the special guest of First Lady Hillary Clinton, who as I recall had him in an armlock of some kind in the viewing stand? I like to think that it was one at the beginning of one of the electoral years.
Whoa. Wait. Both is not an option?
I can see this kind of thing from several perspectives.
a) One rotten apple does not a career make.
b) One rotten apple is a crime and a crime is a crime.
c) One rotten apple wasn’t so rotten, it was taken out of context and misunderstood.
d) One rotten apple wasn’t even an apple and the prosecutor is just wrong.
e) One rotten apple is just normal and not a crime or different from what every other governor has done forever. Politically impeachable, but not criminal.
Politics doesn’t lend to simple answers in many cases — therefore it does pay to have few enemies who might land a punch on something trivial, but with big effects. However, if Blago had actually been trying to do something important he might get away with murder and still have enough friends to maintain his position.
Politics is indeed a strange thing.
Why oh why am I reminded of Bart Simpson?:
a) I didn’t do it!
b) Nobody saw me!
c) You can’t prove a thing!
The single witnesses against Cheney are George Bush and Scooter Libby.
And if Cheney goes down, Bush is exposed.
So explain to me how you’re going to prosecute that case without any witness to teh fact, and with Judy Miller not being fully forthcoming?