Reid Says Blagojevich Indictment “Coming In A Few Days” — Maybe Not

Today, Harry Reid said on Meet the Press that an indictment against Rod Blagojevich "will be coming in a few days according to the US Attorney in Illinois."

That’s probably wishful thinking on Harry’s part.  While it is not a "grand jury secret" to tell someone what day you expect to ask the GJ to vote on an indictment, it seems unlikely that Harry is now flacking for the US Attorney’s Office. Randy Samborn does an excellent job and doesn’t need the help.

Rather, you may have heard (or read Bmaz’s piece) about Pat Fitzgerald asking the court for a 90 day extension of time to obtain an indictment of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.   As the motion itself tells us there is simply a huge volume of wiretap tapes to transcribe:

In the most recent set of Title III intercepts, thousands of phone calls were intercepted between late-October 2008 and early-December 2008.

Often, the US Attorney’s Office uses the same court reporters as the courthouse — they have had background checks and security clearances — as opposed to an outside court reporter service,  which I might use for a deposition in a contracts litigation.

The courthouse court reporters have to cover the trials going on in the courthouse, the grand jury proceedings,  and all the arraignments in front of the magistrates.  So you can only get them to do your wiretap tape transcriptions when they have down time from the "day" job.

When  you get these first draft transcripts back, big chunks will say "UI" (=inaudible or unintelligible). The cases agents — and there are far fewer of these than you might think — then sit with a variable speed tape player and painstakingly go over the transcript to try to fill in the blanks.

It’s almost like doing a crossword puzzle, because sometimes a word that you thought was Tom in the second draft, you realize was Don in the fourth draft b/c you decipher a new section after playing the tape for the tenth time.

Agents HATE this work and will do anything to avoid it. Yes, even in high profile cases. Also, there are not so many of these tape machines available. When you present the tapes to the GJ, you give them the transcript to read along. Getting those transcripts, and getting them right, takes a certain amount of man hours and you really can’t do much to rush that process.

Related posts:

1. Torture: How a Review Gets to Grand Jury in Five Days or Less
2. Palin: Criminal Indictment “Pending,” Reports Alaska Law Enforcement Official
3. Health Care Reform: Wyden is Causing Trouble Again (for Reid)
4. Sunday Late Night: Your NN2010 Host, Harry Reid
5. CIA IG Report to be Released June 19; More Torture Revelations Coming?