The Illinois State Senate begins its impeachment trial Monday for accused political fixer Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but the man on the hot seat isn’t planning to be on hand to defend himself. In his first in-depth television interiew with TODAY’s Amy Robach, Blagojevich called the proceedings little more than a kangaroo court designed to lop off his political head.
“I’m standing for a much bigger principle,” Blagojevich told Robach. “I’m telling them, `If you want to throw me out of office then I’d be willing to sacrifice myself for the principle that everyone is entitled to a fair trial in America.”
Blagojevich, 52, the two-term Illinois governor who once harbored presidential aspirations, has seen his political career fall in to ruins and his very freedom in peril after a December 9, 2008 arrest on federal corruption charges. He stands accused of trying to sell President Barack Obama’s vacated U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder and also peddle influence in exchange for campaign donations.
In his exclusive interview with Robach, Blagojevich expressed both defiance at the charges brought against him, but also resignation that his political fate is sealed. Most shockingly, he compared his plight to those of political leaders Nelson Mandela, Mohandas Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King.
Telling Robach he was just readying to rise at 6 a.m. December 9 when the FBI phoned telling him agents were waiting outside his home to arrest him, he first thought a friend was playing a practical joke on him – but it ended up being what he regards to his family “our Pearl Harbor Day.”
While his first thoughts turned to his wife Patricia, and the couple’s daughters, Amy 12, and Annie, 5, Blagojevich told Robach he then “thought about Mandela, Dr. King, Ghandi and trying to put some perspective in all of this.
“It’s inconceivable that something like this could happen and why.”
Impeachment inevitable
But for the FBI, the case is clearer. After weeks of listening in on Blagojevich’s conversations in wire taps on his home phone and at his campaign offices, the agency gathered evidence that alleges the governor was spearheading a pay-to-play scheme to sell Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder. And among other backroom dealings, the allegations include a claim that Blagojevich sought campaign kickbacks in exchange for $8 million in funding for Children’s Memorial Hospital of Chicago.
Blagojevich will have his day in court on federal charges of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery later this year, but he likely won’t be governor of Illinois when that day rolls around. Blagojevich complains he won’t be allowed to mount a defense for his governorship – saying the Illinois State Senate must accept the allegations in a State House panel report “as fact, and you can’t contest that, no matter who your witnesses might be and how great your evidence might be.”
He acknowledges his removal from office is a foregone conclusion. “I think the thing is rigged and it is fixed and there’s no chance whatsoever to have a fair hearing,” Blagojevich told Robach. “I think what you’ll see is a roll call that will be pre-designed and we’ll see whether or not I even get one vote.”
“You can conceivably bring in 15 angels and 20 saints led by Mother Teresa to come in to testify to my good character, to my integrity and all the rest. It wouldn’t matter because that report, under their rules, has to be accepted as fact, and if you accept that report as fact then they would have to throw you out.”