Blagojevich attorney: He's a talker, not criminal

An attorney for Rod Blagojevich said Tuesday the impeached governor didn't testify at his corruption trial because the government did not prove its case against him.

Sam Adam Jr. told jurors in his closing argument that's why he did not call Blagojevich to testify, as he'd promised at the beginning of the trial. He called the governor's silence the "elephant in the room."

"I thought he'd sit right up here," Adam said, shouting and pointing at the empty witness chair. "I promised he'd testify. We were wrong. Blame me."

"I had no idea that in two and a half months of trial that they'd prove nothing," he told jurors, who will begin deliberating today.

Adam dismissed prosecution claims that Blagojevich tried to sell or trade the nomination to Barack Obama's former Senate seat for a Cabinet job, saying, "That man wasn't selling any seat." He said jurors knew that for themselves after listening to hours of FBI wiretap tapes played by prosecutors during the evidence phase of the trial.

"You heard the tapes and you heard Rod on the tapes," he said. "You can infer what was in Rod's mind on the tapes. You can infer from those tapes whether he's trying to extort the president of the United States. We heard tape after tape of just talking. ... If you put Joan and Melissa Rivers in a room you wouldn't hear that much talk. That's how he is."

Adam was warned by Judge James Zagel that he would be stopped if he told jurors about witnesses the prosecution did not call. Zagel said it's improper for the defense to imply that those people - including convicted political fixer Tony Rezko - would have helped Blagojevich's case.

Blagojevich, 53, has pleaded not guilty to 24 counts, including trying to sell or trade an appointment to Obama's vacated Senate seat for a Cabinet post, private job or campaign cash.

His brother, Nashville, Tenn. businessman Robert Blagojevich, 54, has also pleaded not guilty to taking part in that alleged scheme.

In the prosecution's closing argument Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Niewoehner methodically laid out the government's allegations of how Blagojevich tried to "shake down" everyone from a racetrack owner to a children's hospital executive to Obama.

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Video</h2> <ul class="video"> <!-- Start of Brightcove Player --> <div style="display:none"> </div> <!-- By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. --> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script> <object id="myExperience275354625001" class="BrightcoveExperience"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="300" /> <param name="height" value="205" /> <param name="playerID" value="18011347001" /> <param name="publisherID" value="1659832549"/> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="275354625001" /> </object> <!-- This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line. --> <script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script> <!-- End of Brightcove Player --> </ul> </div> </div> </div>