RUSH: You remember Nancy Pelosi — I can’t keep a straight face today. Nancy Pelosi, November 8th, 2006, quoted in the Washington Post: ‘The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, DC, and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open, most ethical Congress in history.’ Nancy Pelosi contributing to the sitcom today. Jan Schakowsky, by the way, who is upset at how Fitzgerald stormed into Blago’s house in front of his wife and kids. August 31st, 2005, AP: ‘The husband of an Illinois congresswoman pleaded guilty Wednesday to tax violations and bank fraud for writing rubber checks and failing to collect withholding tax from an employee. Robert Creamer, a political consultant married to four-term US Rep. Jan Schakowsky, could face four years in prison on the two felony counts when he is sentenced Dec. 21.’ This is ’05. Jan Schakowsky is a huge leftist, very close to Obama.
‘Creamer, 58, a prominent Chicago political consultant, was accused of swindling nine financial institutions of at least $2.3 million while he ran a public interest group in the 1990s.’ He was indicted by Patrick Fitzgerald. Okay, Pat, now I hear — Pat can’t hear me because he’s still doing his presser up in Chicago — I hear that in exchange for $400 million, because he wants news, he wants people to tell him when they’ve heard of corruption, right? He asked the people of Illinois, ‘Hey, you gotta call us. You gotta tell us when you hear any corruption.’ Okay, Pat, somebody send this tape — we might do it ourselves — to his office in Chicago. I have heard, Pat, that in exchange for $400 million in union campaign spending, Obama will be pushing for non-secret ballots to unionize nonunion businesses. I think this is somewhat corrupt, Pat, and I think you ought to look into it. I think he got $450 million from union thugs and leaders. Of course, he had no knowledge of any of this. No knowledge of Jeremiah Wright, no knowledge of Rezko. Not the Tony Rezko he knew, he had no knowledge of any of this. So Pat Fitzgerald needs to know that Obama took $450 million in union contributions and is now going to be pushing for non-secret ballots to unionize nonunion businesses. So Pat Fitzgerald, I have given you a heads-up, I have given you a tip. You can start to ferret out even more corruption. Here is Fitzgerald, by the way, this morning, a portion of his press conference.
FITZGERALD: The most cynical behavior in all this, the most appalling is the fact that Governor Blagojevich tried to sell the appointment to the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Obama. The conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave. The governor’s own words describing this Senate seat: Quote, ‘It’s a bleeping valuable thing. You just don’t give it away for nothing,’ close quote. Another quote: ‘I’ve got this thing, and it’s bleeping golden. I’m just not giving it up for bleeping nothing. I’m not going to do it. I can always use it. I can parachute me there,’ quote. Those are his words, not our characterization, other than with regard to the bleep.
RUSH: Pat Fitzgerald did not give us all the details. Here is the transcript of the actual phone call of the tape featuring Blago. ‘I’ve got this thing and it’s F-ing golden and I’m just not giving it up for F-ing nothing. I’m not going to do it, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there.’ This is a secret phone call, or phone call secretly recorded by the FBI on November 5th, the day after the election. ‘The FBI affidavit said Blagojevich had been told by an adviser ‘the President-elect can get Rod Blagojevich’s wife on paid corporate boards in exchange for naming the President-elect’s pick to the Senate. Told by two other advisers he has to ‘suck it up’ for two years, the FBI says it heard Blagojevich complain he has to give this ‘motherf’er [the President-elect] his Senator. F-him. For nothing? F-him.”
He called him an MF-er on the tape. Now, Pat Fitzgerald didn’t tell you that. My God, I thought Obama was this great unifier. I mean everybody around this guy is still enraged. The governor is heard on the tape saying he will pick another candidate. ‘Before I just give F-ing Senate candidate A F-ing Senate seat and I don’t get anything?’ Now, again, Blagojevich had been told — this according to the FBI affidavit — by an advisor, quote, ‘Obama can get Blagojevich’s wife on a paid corporate board or two in exchange for naming the president-elect’s pick to the Senate.’ Now, what’s interesting about this is that Fitzgerald says Obama had nothing to do with this, nothing whatsoever. Here’s that remark.
FITZGERALD: I should make clear the complaint makes no allegations about the president-elect whatsoever, his conduct. This part of the scheme lost steam when the person that the governor thought was the president-elect’s choice of senator took herself out of the running. But after the deal never happened, this is the governor’s reaction, quote: ‘They’re not willing to give me anything but appreciation. Bleep them.’
RUSH: All right, now, the FBI affidavit says that Blago had been told by an advisor, quote, ‘president-elect’ — that’s Obama; we only have one president-elect, right? I cannot be confusing anything. Quote, ‘the president-elect’ — this is an advisor talking to Blago. ‘The president-elect can get Blagojevich’s wife on paid corporate boards in exchange for naming the president-elect’s pick to the Senate.’ But that wasn’t good enough for Blago. He wanted something for himself. And he didn’t want to have to wait two years for his term to expire, I guess, before his wife could be appointed to these boards. And that’s when he came out with the MF-er on the tape. So Obama has somebody in mind for this seat. We just don’t know who it is, and Blagojevich was not happy about it. Here’s one more bite from Fitzgerald.
FITZGERALD: We have Senate seat that seemed to be as recently as days ago auctioned off to the — you know, to the highest bidder for campaign contributions, and Governor Blagojevich own words on the tape of the bug that’s set forth in the complaint talked about selling this like a sports agent. So we stepped in for a number of reasons. Basically, as I said before, we’re in the middle of a corruption crime spree, and we wanted to stop it.
RUSH: ‘We are in the middle of a corruption crime spree, and we wanted to stop it.’ They made their move before the Senate seat could be sold. And have you also noticed, ladies and gentlemen, the parade of daily Obama press conferences seemed to have stopped.
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RUSH: Here is something interesting from page 60 of the indictment against Governor Blagojevich, known as Governor Blago in Illinois. On November 7th, 2008, this is just 32 days ago, ‘November 7th, 2008, Rod Blagojevich discussed the open Senate seat in a three-way call with John Harris.’ That’s his chief of staff who is also indicted, by the way ‘– and advisor B, a Washington, DC-based consultant. Blagojevich indicated in the call that if he was appointed as secretary of Health and Human Services by the president-elect, then Blagojevich would appoint Senate candidate one to the open Senate seat.’ I don’t know who Senate candidate one is, but I do know that one of the people that was in the running for this who took herself out of the running is this Valerie Jarrett babe. She was born in ’56. She will be 52 years old, big time advisor to Obama during his campaign and now. And in a previous bite that we had from Pat Fitzgerald, they said his choice pulled herself out of the running, and that is what allows Obama to say they had nothing to do with this. Now, that’s my interpretation. That’s not what Pat Fitzgerald said. I don’t know who Senate candidate one is.
Blagojevich indicated on one of the tapes that an advisor told him that Obama had somebody in mind for this seat but that Obama wasn’t willing to pay for it, and that’s when Blagojevich started dropping the F-bomb and the mother F-bomb and all of that all over the tape. So Blagojevich discussed the open Senate seat in a three-way call with John Harris and advisor B, a Washington, DC-based consultant. Blagojevich indicated in the call that if he was appointed secretary of Health and Human Services by Obama, then Blagojevich would appoint Senate candidate one to the open Senate seat. ‘Harris, chief of staff, stated, ‘We wanted our ask to be reasonable and rather than make it look like some sort of selfish grab for a quid pro quo.’ Rod Blagojevich stated that he needs to consider his family and that he is financially hurting. Harris said that they are considering what will help the financial security of the Blagojevich family and what will keep Blagojevich politically viable. Blagojevich stated, ‘I want to make money.’ During the call, Blagojevich, Harris, and advisor B discussed the prospect of working a three-way deal for the open Senate seat. Harris, the chief of staff, noted that Blagojevich is interested in taking a high-paying position with an organization called Change to Win, which is connected to the Service Employees International Union. Harris suggested that the Service Employees International Union official make Blagojevich the head of Change to Win, and in exchange, the president-elect could help Change to Win with its legislative agenda on a national level.’
So all kinds of maneuvering was going on here to help — (coughing) excuse me — still got this bug, folks. You’ll have to bear with me on the coughing. I can’t laugh. I still cannot laugh without erupting and this whole show has been nothing but one giant laugh, and it remains a giant laugh, and I can’t laugh. It makes me sad, it’s very sad. At any rate, all kinds of maneuvering was going on here. Blagojevich trying to get himself a union gig, then the Health and Human Services, which, of course, he’s not going to get now because the Puffster got that one. Yes, Mr. Snerdley? He might have considered appointing himself. Have you seen something official on that? Well, there’s so much that’s just coming out here. This is from page 60 of the indictment, and there’s so much coming out now here that it’s gonna take some time to keep up with this. But I’m shocked that anybody is surprised at this. This is standard operating procedure, particularly for Chicago, not to mention Illinois.
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RUSH: Now, I checked the e-mail during the break. There are a lot of people who want me to address this, they said, Rush, ‘You’re treating this with a little humor, we appreciate that. But, come on, Rush, do you really think Obama was not involved?’
Let me give you my take on this, because my take on Obama’s involvement here is multifaceted. Now, Rick Moran, in fact, at American Thinker has opined on this as well. He says if you think Obama was stupid enough to get involved in these kinds of dealings with Blagojevich, you can forget about it. ‘Obama likely already knew of Blagojevich’s incredible corruption because of his relationship with Tony Rezko, the convicted Chicago political fixer who was a valuable associate of both Obama and Blagojevich. In fact, it came out at Rezko’s trial that Obama was present during a couple of meetings where Rezko alluded to his ‘pay for play’ scheme that has now ensnared the governor. Obama no doubt gave Blagojevich a wide berth after learning about how interested the prosecutors were in the governor’s wheeling and dealing,’ and took his own choice for the Senate seat out of the running.
Now, this stuff against Blagojevich, people are beginning to speculate now that he may be genuinely insane, or not mentally stable, ’cause he knew all this was going on, and yet he continued to offer the seat, first to the union, and, by the way, all these people are intimately involved with Obama, a union that helped get him elected, an offshoot of the union that takes Obama’s favorite word and makes it a title of the organization, Change to Win or whatever it is. Blagojevich thinking — and, by the way, Mr. Snerdley, you were right, I did check this. Blagojevich did say that he was willing to appoint himself. Quote, ‘If I don’t get what I want, and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself.’ This was said in recorded conversations, according to the prosecutors.
And then of course he tries to illegally withhold some state funding from the Tribune Company in an effort to get them to fire the editorial board at the paper. Now, that’s just silly. To think that that was going to happen, what must your mental state be? Not that we wouldn’t love to see it, don’t misunderstand. But what does your mental state have to be to think that you’re going to be able to pull that kind of thing off? And then you’re out there selling a Senate seat to anybody who will talk to you about it while you know that they’re investigating you! Now, I find it hard to believe that once Obama found out this was going on he had anything to do with it. I think he backed off, I think he tried to keep his distance, and he pulled his pick out of the running, and we think that’s Valerie Jarrett. But I want to go back to something that’s, to me, quite interesting. I want to go back to a Pat Fitzgerald bite, ladies and gentlemen, from this morning in Chicago at his press conference. Listen carefully to these remarks.
FITZGERALD: We have a Senate seat that seemed to be as recently as days ago auctioned off, you know, to the highest bidder for campaign contributions, and Governor Blagojevich own words on the tape of the bug that’s set forth in the complaint, talked about selling this like a sports agent. So we stepped in for a number of reasons, basically as I said before we are in the middle of a corruption crime spree and we want it to stop.
RUSH: All right, we’re in the middle of a corruption crime spree and I want it to stop. Now, I, my friends, am not in law enforcement, but I have a question about this. If you see crimes being committed, if you are in the middle of a crime spree — and these are nonviolent crimes, we’re talking white collar corruption here — you know for a fact because of what you already know that more people will be drawn into the crime spree, especially in the white-collar area. Why do you blow the whistle and shut it down? Why do you shut it down when you — and you’re Pat Fitzgerald, man, I mean, you’re Eliot Ness. A crime spree going on, and you shut it down. Now, this causes little neurons to start firing in my fertile frontal lobe. I don’t know. It seems this was done to stop one thing, and that is Blagojevich making this Senate appointment. It seems like they moved in to stop this Senate appointment scandal. And why would they do that? Why would they stop the investigation? There’s a crime spree going on. Why would Fitzgerald, or whoever’s running him, move in and shut this thing down now? Just because they didn’t want this corrupt individual, like we’ve never had one before in Chicago, naming Obama’s replacement? Why would that be? Why would they want to stop this guy when there’s a crime spree going on? Fitzgerald’s words, we are in the middle of a corruption crime spree. We want it to stop. What’s the rest of that sentence? We want it to stop before it ensnares X, Y, and Z, and who the hell knows who else.
It’s Obama’s Senate seat we’re talking about here being put up for auction, and we know that Obama had somebody in mind for the seat, and that person took themselves out of the running, suspiciously, just hours or days prior to the crime spree being shut down with the indictment today. One thing seems certain to me, and that is that somebody in Chicago did not want Obama stepping into this mess after the first attempted arrangement fell through because he had somebody in mind. I remember a couple weeks ago, maybe a little longer than that, maybe not quite as long, Obama was asked, ‘Do you have anybody in mind?’ because that’s when Jesse Jackson’s name was surfacing and there was pressure being brought to bear on Blago to keep the seat black. And they were saying that Jesse Jackson, Jr., might be and Obama said, (paraphrasing) ‘Ah, that’s the governor’s job and I’m not involved in any way, shape, manner, or form. I’m above that now. I’m the president-elect, that’s the governor’s job. I have no say in that,’ and so forth and so on.
Now, I know I’m the one who said it doesn’t matter what Obama says, it’s how he says it, but he did say that, and I didn’t think much about it at the time, obviously, because I have known all along it doesn’t matter what he says! This is a guy who’s never going to get in trouble for what he says. This is my bottom line. So you just better get used to that. Yes, Mr. Snerdley? A question from the program observer. Yes. Hm-hm. Hm-hm. Hm-hm. Oh, yeah. In an investigation like this, the higher-ups in the Justice Department, of course, know what’s going on. Now, he is the US attorney for Chicago; Mike Garcia is the US attorney for the Southern District of Manhattan. I’m sure northern Illinois US attorney Fitzgerald, ‘Yeah, the Justice Department knows what’s going on here.’ They do. I don’t know why that would have anything to do with anything, Snerdley.
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RUSH: Dick Durbin this afternoon in Chicago at a press conference.
DURBIN: This is a sad day for my state of Illinois. Our system of justice gives anyone accused of a crime the right to defend themselves in court, and Governor Blagojevich will have that opportunity.
RUSH: Yeah?
DURBIN: But if the allegations — I read them this morning — in the criminal complaint against Governor Blagojevich are proven true, he has clearly abused the public trust. I think the Illinois General Assembly should enact a law as quickly as possible calling for a special election to fill the Senate vacancy of Barack Obama. No appointment by this governor under these circumstances could produce a credible replacement.
RUSH: Ooooh, man, due process doesn’t count anymore, even for one of their own guys. It is amazing, ladies and gentlemen, they have thrown Blagojevich under the bus as though he were a Republican here. Normally when Democrats do stuff like this, they circle the wagons, but nobody’s out circling the wagons around Blago today. Not even Durbin. He shoulda called him a Nazi thug or Pol Pot type dictator thug or whatever to really add emphasis to this. Again, ladies and gentlemen, another question here about Fitzgerald. Now, Fitzgerald, because people are trying to understand, why stop this? We’re in the middle of a crime spree. We are in the middle of a crime spree, and the crime spree involves the selling of what? The Senate seat currently belongs to Barack Obama. We know that Obama had somebody in mind for the seat. That person pulled themselves out of the running at a propitious time.
We also know that Pat Fitzgerald, who was the special prosecutor in the leak of the name Valerie Plame as some sort of a CIA James Bond, which was always a fraud, he did a two-and-a-half-year investigation even after he had his answer. The name of the leaker was Richard Armitage. Armitage is who leaked it to Bob Novak, and yet Fitzgerald convened a two-and-a-half year investigation and then got himself a process crime, Scooter Libby, perjury. And a jury convicted. That investigation went on and on and on and on and on and on and on. This one gets shut down in the middle of a corruption crime spree. That’s what Patrick Fitzgerald called it. Now, we know, ladies and gentlemen, we know that for the past couple of weeks Obama has had insertion teams all over various agencies of the government in advance of his inauguration. This is part of the transition. The Bush administration is participating in this. And some of these people showing up, State Department, the Justice Department, where Eric Holder will be the attorney general, are examining the way things are going, they’re familiarizing themselves with ongoing matters. Ahem. So an Obama insertion team in the Justice Department for a couple weeks now stumbles across what’s happening here in Illinois with good old Governor Blago. And then all of a sudden Fitzgerald stops an ongoing crime spree in the middle of the crime spree.
‘Rush, are you saying that Obama people at the Justice Department transition team called Fitzgerald –‘ ladies and gentlemen, don’t put words in my mouth. We’re never going to have wiretaps on those kinds of phone calls. But I mean, look, two and two equals four unless it’s outcome based education, in which case it equals whatever you want it to be. To me, two and two equals four. Now, another thing to keep in mind, ladies and gentlemen, as we wade through this primordial muck that is Chicago politics, one of the things that new incoming presidents do is fire all of the sitting United States attorneys. I think there are 93 of them, something like that. Bill Clinton did this. It was one of the first things he did the first week in office, canned them and put his own guys in there, standard operating procedure. Bush did not do this, by the way. Bush, with a new tone, left a lot of Clinton US attorneys in office, did not sweep ’em, only in his second term did he start replacing some, and the Democrats tried to impeach the attorney general at the time, Gonzales, for supposedly playing politics with the Justice Department. And of course the White House did not fire back, did not defend itself. No reason to go over already trod ground.
However, what are the odds that the US attorney in Chicago will be replaced by Barack Obama when he is inaugurated? Can you just see the headline now? ‘Patrick Fitzgerald, he of the Scooter Libby conviction and the indictment of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich today was fired by incoming President Barack Obama and replaced by X.’ People will say, ‘Wait a minute, Fitzgerald is fired? Why, after he indicts Blagojevich, a Democrat?’ I don’t care how tone deaf they are in Obamaville — and they’re not tone deaf — that’s not going to happen. So he might fire 92 US attorneys, but he’s not going to fire 93 US attorneys. Now, it doesn’t mean that Fitzgerald can’t be elevated. It doesn’t mean that Fitzgerald can’t resign on his own, I mean stranger things have happened. But the timing of this, and Fitzgerald making it a point today to say that Obama had nothing to do with it, not about the president-elect, I’m sure, as things stand now, there wasn’t. I think it’s part of why you shut down the ongoing corruption crime spree, it’s about his seat.
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RUSH: Getting answers to my questions here very quickly, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve been asking all day, why shut down an ongoing crime spree? Turns out that Jack Conaty of the Fox affiliate in Chicago, Fox TV Eyeball News, said this. ‘We did receive a tip this morning that perhaps all of this came together so quickly because the governor may have reached out to Rahm Emanuel, the president-elect’s chief of staff, in attempting to leverage filling the Senate seat. And it may have been Rahm Emanuel who tipped the scale and made this move as quickly as it did.’So there’s the answer, Rahm Emanuel, who is clean and pure as the wind-driven snow, when he was reached out to by Governor Blago, said, ‘We can’t have this,’ and made a move to shut down the investigation or stop it or what have you, because we can’t have this. So that’s what’s going around Chicago now, that Rahm Emanuel was the white knight that saved the day.