Blagojevich retrial, Protecting Obama, Patrick Fitzgerald conspirator?, Fitzgerald and Justice Dept delayed arrest of Blagojevich

Patrick Fitzgerald has zero credibility with me. However, with rats jumping ship left and right, will Fitzgerald throw Obama under the bus?

From the Chicago Tribune.
“Moments after a rare setback, a chastened U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was acting nothing like the swaggering prosecutor who just 20 months earlier proclaimed he had arrested a sitting governor to stop a political crime spree.

He would not take questions from reporters about his office’s failure to convict former Gov. Rod Blagojevich on 23 counts against him, winning a guilty verdict only on a single count of lying to the FBI,  among the least serious of the charges he faced.

Instead, Fitzgerald vowed to retry the case, then quickly ending his news conference.

“So, for all practical purposes, we are in the mode of being close to jury selection for a retrial,” he said.”

Read more:

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/08/defense-jubilant-prosecutors-look-to-retrial.html

From the Chicago Tribune.

“The counts on which the jury could not agree framed the heart of the government claims that Blagojevich schemed to profit from his post from his earliest days in office and in the 2008 attempted to auction off the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama.”

“Lawyers in the case are to be back in court Aug. 26, possibly to pick a retrial date. Prosecutors are expected to push for the case to be back before a jury this fall, while the defense is likely to drag its heels and promised to appeal the single count the former governor was convicted on.
While gaining a conviction of the former governor on one count, the result of the trial was a far cry from the sweeping convictions in public corruption cases that Fitzgerald and his prosecutors have grown accustomed to. In his nine years at the helm of the prosecutor’s office here, Fitzgerald has secured guilty verdicts for an array of public officials, ranging from aldermen to the patronage chief for Mayor Richard Daley to Blagojevich’s predecessor as governor, Republican George Ryan.
The government case against Blagojevich was a vivid example of how slowly the wheels of justice can grind in public corruption cases. Blagojevich was arrested just weeks after he allegedly began plotting to sell Obama’s Senate seat, but federal agents had been probing wrongdoing in the governor’s administration since at least 2004 — his second year in office — and questioned Blagojevich for the first time in 2005 during his first term.”

Read more:

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/08/blagojevich-convicted-on-1-of-24-counts.html

Thanks to the Tribune for pointing out that Blagojevich was under scrutiny at least by 2004.

Now for the rest of the story.

From Citizen Wells July 15, 2010
“The question is, why did Patrick Fitzgerald and the US Justice Department wait until December 2008 to arrest Rod Blagojevich?”

“The US Justice Department had plenty of evidence indicting Rod Blagojevich by 2006. Why did the US Justice Department wait until December 2008, after the election, to arrest Blagojevich?”

“From in or about 2002 to the present, in Cook County”

“Since approximately 2003, the government has been investigating allegations of illegal activity occurring in State of Illinois government as part of the administration of Governor ROD BLAGOJEVICH.”

“Timeline is revealing

Patrick Fitzgerald was aware of Blagojevich’s corruption in 2003

“Pamela Meyer Davis had been trying to win approval from a state health planning board for an expansion of Edward Hospital, the facility she runs in a Chicago suburb, but she realized that the only way to prevail was to retain a politically connected construction company and a specific investment house.

Instead of succumbing to those demands, she went to the FBI and U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald in late 2003 and agreed to secretly record conversations about the project.””

Patrick Fitzgerald and US Justice Dept. delayed Blagojevich arrest