Rod Blagojevich
speaker
701 appearances
4 recordings
4 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 26 Mar
Rod Blagojevich’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Yeah. That's well done. The River Awards made the difference. Mayor Daley, the first Mayor Daley, was holding back the counting of those votes until he saw what Southern Illinois Republican area came up with. And once those votes were counted, then he let those River Awards come out and Giancana, people like that were really instrumental in electing Kennedy.
And then when Bobby Kennedy started going after Giancana, as the attorney general, they felt betrayed.
Yeah, of course.
I mean, apparently the father made the deal, right? But with me, I always felt that there was a possibility that not only would they be listening, but that somebody would set you up. And through the years in politics, people would. They'd come to you and offer you things that you knew were illegal. And you didn't do it because it was illegal, but also you felt this could be a setup.
This could be the FBI trying to entrap you into doing something. And that's a common thing. Not an uncommon thing.
I was elected the first Democratic governor in Illinois in November 2002 after 26 years of Republican governors. I first learned that they began to look into my administration and people around me in December of 2003. And I had been governor for 10 months and they were already looking. And I knew it, which meant we got to be super extra careful because these people are scrutinizing us.
On the one hand, I felt good. That puts pressure on people around me. People are doing work for me to do the legal things and not cross lines. I never imagined that the FBI and the Department of Justice... And these U.S. attorneys who come out of the best schools would be so corrupt and dishonest. I felt like, OK, they'll look and see how we do things.
If we make some mistakes along the way, we'll make adjustments. So they chased me for five years. And by the time they taped my phones, it was no surprise. There was all kinds of pressure at that time because they'd gotten a guy. who was close to me and Obama, a guy by the name of Tony Oresko, who they probably convicted him of things that weren't crimes either.
They were squeezing him to say things about me and Obama. He wouldn't do it. They put him into solitary confinement for three years to get him to invent crimes against us. He wouldn't do it. This guy's a stand-up guy. Obama sold him out, and he did more for Obama than he ever did for me. But I knew all of that.
And so at the time when they began wiretapping my phones, which was late October 2008, everything I talked about doing with regard to the appointment of Obama's successor to the United States Senate, I felt it was very possible they were listening. How could they not? Because they were chasing me. They so much wanted to get me. And Obama and I both were in their crosshairs in the very beginning.
But I think the politics of it changed as his political fortunes improved and he looked like he was going to be the next president. And these people, these U.S. attorneys get appointed by the president. And these were Bush-appointed, Cheney-appointed prosecutors. And it's very unusual that the previous administration's prosecutors stay in office.
When the new president comes in, they leave, as you see with Trump and the other parties, people come in. But these people stayed in. And when they arrested me,
What they wanted me to do was to basically say that I was guilty of trying to sell a Senate seat, and I was trying to sell it to another guilty party, who was the guy who started the whole thing, by the name of Barack Obama, who wanted to buy that Senate seat, because that's where the whole thing began. It was Obama on election night.
He sent an emissary to me to suggest a political deal because he wanted this woman named Valerie Jarrett to be appointed to his Senate seat. The governor points to the Senate. Pause for a second.
Jamie, there's feedback.
You use third parties, emissaries between two people.
To some extent, that's part of it, of course. But there's other dynamics that also it's just a little bit easier to kind of test the mood of the other person if you have a third party who both people like or respect. In this particular case, it was a labor boss. by the name of Tom Balanoff, he came up to me election night in November 2008. That was the election you voted for Obama.
You and I are both guilty of that. And I was there that night. Chicago was magical, you know, historic. And it was great in the sense that finally America, you know, crossed a significant barrier. A black person can be elected president of the United States. Every black child growing up can now look and say, one day maybe I can be that. You know, there's the American dream and opportunity.
So in that sense, it was a beautiful thing. So this Balanoff guy comes up to me and he says, Brock called me last night. He said I was pumping gas in this gas station in the South Loop area, downtown Chicago. Brock called me last night. He said it was around – he even told me the time, like around 6.30 or 7 at night. And he asked me to come to you.
He would like you to appoint Valerie Jarrett as his successor to the Senate. He wanted me to know what you want. I wonder if I can come and see you so we can discuss this. I said, sure, call me tomorrow. Now, that's totally legal and appropriate. He's not suggesting anything illegal. Obama just wants to make a political deal. But what happened was they criminalized it against me.
Showing 261–280 of 701 · page 14 of 36
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