Blago trial may give Dems fits

Lawyers for Rod Blagojevich told reporters last week that there might be a delay in the former governor’s criminal trial when a federal grand jury, as expected, hands down a new indictment. But they also stressed that they were working hard to keep the trial on track for its June start date.

As I write this, the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago is hoping to re-indict Blagojevich in order to make sure its criminal case isn’t damaged by an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the federal “honest services” statute. The brief statute has been used by federal prosecutors for years to prosecute politicians and corporate executives on a wide variety of charges, claiming they defrauded citizens, investors, etc., via “a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.”

The law has come under fire because it is so incredibly vague that prosecutors have used it to prosecute all sorts of behavior. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer wondered aloud whether a worker taking an unauthorized break “to read the Racing Form” could be indicted.

Thankfully, federal prosecutors have better things to do than indict employees for reading newspapers.

But this column isn’t about honest services fraud. It’s about Illinois politics. So, let’s get on with it.

Blagojevich’s criminal trial has been expected to last most of the summer and end just about the time that the fall campaigns are heating up around Labor Day.

To date, Blagojevich has used every opportunity that he could to claim he was railroaded by prosecutors and to point fingers of blame at his fellow Democrats who, he believes, are far more deserving of prosecution than him.

Blagojevich deeply and thoroughly despises Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton, so many believe he’ll use his trial and the accompanying daily media spotlight to try to hurt them and, by extension, their candidates as much as he can. Blagojevich’s book is drenched with hostility toward the two men.

The former governor also detests Pat Quinn, whom he accuses of cutting a deal with Madigan and Cullerton on tax hikes in order to become governor (yes, it’s a silly theory, but this is Rod Blagojevich we’re talking about here). As I write this, we don’t know whether Quinn will survive the primary Democratic primary. But Blagojevich often sparred with Quinn’s opponent, Comptroller Dan Hynes, so I’m sure he’ll think of something to thwack Hynes with as well.