The criminal complaint against Blagojevich is here. Here’s a highlight:
Defendants ROD BLAGOJEVICH and JOHN HARRIS, together with others, offered to, and threatened to withhold from, the Tribune Company substantial state financial assistance in connection with Wrigley Field, which assistance ROD BLAGOJEVICH believed to be worth at least $100 million to the Tribune Company, for the private purpose of inducing the controlling shareholder of the Tribune Company to fire members of the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune, a newspaper owned by the Tribune Company, who were responsible for editorials critical of ROD BLAGOJEVICH.
In other words, Blago wanted certain members of the editorial board fired and he threatened to withhold state funds that would have gone to the Tribune unless they fired the writers who had been saying all those nasty things about him. Lovely.
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Typical politics, most likely. He just got caught.
What is it with these Illinois governors? The last one is currently sitting in jail, and hopefully this guy will be joining him.
Yet people still look to the government as being able to implement some sort of "public good".
Props to the Illinois voters. They pick good ones time and time again.
You stay classy ROD BLAGOJEVICH!
If every politician that sold out their position went to jail, the standard career path would be office followed by prison. Maybe they could determine the sentence based on how much money the politician spent above some minimal percentage of their jurisdiction's GDP.
Disgraceful. Ironic that I was watching The Untouchables last night on amc and chuckled when Sean Connery was explaining the "Chicago Way" to Ness.
Evidently, when it rains it pours. The sad part in all of this is that it took so long for this to come out. It seems like if someone has the power to appoint a Senator they should be scrutinized more closely than BLAGOJEVICH was.