{"id":188661,"date":"2010-08-17T17:50:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T22:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/08\/17\/blago-a-swing-and-a-miss\/"},"modified":"2010-08-17T17:50:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-17T22:50:00","slug":"blago-a-swing-and-a-miss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/08\/17\/blago-a-swing-and-a-miss\/","title":{"rendered":"Blago:  A Swing and a Miss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A hung jury on 23 of the 24 counts, and a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.suntimes.com\/news\/2607420,blagojevich-jury-verdict-081710.article\">conviction on lying to an FBI agent<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>The jury is finally in on Rod Blagojevich \u2014 and the verdict is decidedly undecided.<\/p>\n<p>A federal jury of six men and six women just returned a split verdict against the former governor, convicting him on only one of the 24 criminal corruption counts he faced.<\/p>\n<p>Verdict reached: Blagojevich brothers arrive in court The Blago blog: Latest updates Complete coverage of the Blagojevich trial<\/p>\n<p>The governor was found guilty of giving a false statement to federal agents.<\/p>\n<p>In a courthouse where prosecutors win more than 90 percent of the time and after listening to a treasure trove of secretly recorded conversations, the jury couldn\u2019t reach a unanimous decision on the other 23 counts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, the lesson here is that maybe US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is not all that, which I kind of figured when all he got out of Plamegate was Scooter Libby lying to federal officers (funny similarity there).<\/p>\n<p>Actually, there is a broader lesson:  Don&#8217;t talk to law enforcement if you think that there is the vaguest possibility that you are a target, even minor misstatements get thrown into the mix.<\/p>\n<p>FWIW, I don;t think that Rahm will testify at the inevitable retrial, there is simply no &#8220;there&#8221; there.<\/p>\n<p>I still cannot figure out how the prosecution screwed the pooch this badly, but I haven&#8217;t followed the minutiae, and most of what I have heard have been prosecution statements, so I won&#8217;t 2<sup>nd<\/sup>guess the jury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A hung jury on 23 of the 24 counts, and a conviction on lying to an FBI agent: The jury is finally in on Rod Blagojevich \u2014 and the verdict is decidedly undecided. A federal jury of six men and six women just returned a split verdict against the former governor, convicting him on only &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1136,970,972,978],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-corruption","category-justice","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188661"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}