Final attorney skirmish sends Blagojevich case to jury

In the final exchange before the case goes to the jury today, Rod Blagojevich defense attorney Sam Adam Jr. cast the former governor as the victim of a political plot, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Reid Schar countering it's a "desperate" claim.

The two went head-to-head in their final statements to the jury, with Adam going first in his 90-minute closing arguments and Schar meeting every point in rebuttal.

It will be up to the jury to decide their ultimate impact in the 24-count corruption case against Blagojevich and his brother, Robert. Jurors are expected to begin deliberating this morning after receiving instructions from Judge James Zagel.

Adam, as ever, was theatrical and gesturing, moving from shouts to a near whisper, but it was Schar who might have been even more emotional. He began his rebuttal with slightly shaking hands, and finished it with a quavering voice in which he answered Adam's ultimate argument.

Adam painted the entire prosecution of Blagojevich as a political plot to remove the former governor from power. Adam finished by playing a wiretapped conversation Blagojevich had with Deputy Governor Bob Greenlee, in which Greenlee warned him of political forces eager to take him down.

Schar began his rebuttal by saying it was "desperate and ridiculous on its face" to suggest the government prosecution was "a conspiracy of liars." He named many of the 27 witnesses the government presented, and said they must all be lying for Blagojevich to be not guilty.

Dismissing the accusation that it was "one of the great frame-ups of all time," Schar rested his argument on those wiretapped conversations, saying of the witnesses, "They somehow managed to get defendant Blagojevich to frame himself on these tapes."

"What occurred here is exactly what it appears to be," Schar said, and then he listed the charges against Blagojevich: bribery, extortion, wire fraud, conspiracy.

Before that, Adam made several claims of Blagojevich's innocence, and Schar addressed them one by one. Adam started out apologizing for Blagojevich not testifying, when he said he would, by saying, "Blame me," and explaining, "I had no idea that in two months of trial, they would prove nothing."

Schar, in turn, laid out the government's case as a puzzle of evidence that created a complete picture of corruption. He countered defense statements that Blagojevich was duped by depicting him as a savvy politician. "He didn't get twice elected governor of Illinois by accident," Schar said. "He knows how to communicate."

Adam argued there was nothing wrong in Blagojevich approving an $8 million pediatric rate increase for hospitals, then hitting up the head of Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago for a $50,000 fundraiser.

"That ain't extortion," Adam said. "That's a politician doing something that should've been done, and then asking for a contribution."

He looked at the way Blagojevich weighed various appointments to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Obama. "This is a negotiation," Adam said. "That ain't a crime."

"There's no politician defense in the law," Schar responded, saying the simple fact that the two acts were connected constituted extortion.

Adam blamed Blagojevich advisers Alonzo Monk and Tony Rezko for any corruption. "He never knew that Monk was taking cash," Adam said. "I'm sorry, Guv, but you've got absolute horrible judgment on people."

"Blame everyone else," Schar answered. "Yet somehow he's the accidentally corrupt governor."

"Give me a break," was Adam's refrain, as when he suggested it was ludicrous to even suggest Blagojevich might attempt to extort a cabinet post from Obama in exchange for appointing Valerie Jarrett to the Senate.

"Take a step back," Schar kept saying, in urging the jury to take a wider perspective and look at the way the "puzzle" of evidence came together.

Before all that, however, Schar won a major victory in a motion disallowing Adam from mentioning "missing witnesses" Rezko and Stuart Levine and using that to draw "unfavorable inferences" on the part of the jury. Zagel sided with Schar on that, and threatened Adam with contempt if he violated it. He also sided with Schar on several objections on the accuracy of statements of evidence during Adam's closing argument, to the point where Adam was visibly frustrated. At the end of the day, Adam sought a tentative endorsement from Zagel.

"No contempt?" he said.

"I thought that your argument was entirely free of contemptuous content," Zagel replied.