15min chapter

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#2245 - Rod Blagojevich

The Joe Rogan Experience

CHAPTER

Prison Politics and Perceived Corruption

This chapter recounts the experiences of a former political figure who spent nearly eight years in prison, asserting the imprisonment was politically motivated. It examines themes of corruption within political and judicial systems, detailing their election as Illinois’ first Democratic governor and subsequent investigation by the FBI. The narrative highlights significant political maneuvering, including the controversial appointment of a Senate successor after Obama's election, along with personal anecdotes that illustrate the complexities of male camaraderie in the face of serious allegations.

00:00
Speaker 2
Possession of child pornography should be like you shouldn't be able to pardon for stuff like that. It's like there are certain things. It's like, come
Speaker 1
on. You know, I spent almost eight years in prison for politics, not for crimes. I'm happy to answer any questions you have about any of it because I didn't do it. It was all politics. But the first three years, almost three years, they put me in a higher security prison and I'm in there with Crips and Bloods and gangster disciples and Sinaloa cartel drug dealers. Why would they do that? They were squeezing me and pressuring me because they wanted me to basically say I did something that I didn't do. They wanted me to plead guilty to non-crimes.
Speaker 2
So they want to scare you by putting you in with dangerous people.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And they really punished me because I fought back in a way that no one really does, except for Trump. I mean, I was fighting back when they brought those charges against me everywhere, and I was calling them criminals. And
Speaker 2
they are. What did they expect you to do? Did they expect you to just take a sentence, a lower sentence, confess? Exactly. What did they offer you? They
Speaker 1
tried me twice after the first trial, where they failed to convict me on their fake corruption charges. They were floating 18 months. And, you know, there were a lot of people in my team, like my lawyers, who thought that might be the prudent thing to do because you really can't beat these people. The system is rigged. And when they really want to get you, they'll just keep trying you and they'll get their judge to work with them. And they'll ultimately convict you as they did me by using unlawful standards to criminalize things that are legal in politics and government. So the prudent thing, the safe thing was to cut your losses and take the short period of prison time. But I felt I wasn't a businessman. I suppose if I was a businessman facing something like that, you'd make a business decision. You cut your losses. You realize they're bleeding you financially. You can't afford lawyers. This is going to be an endless thing. It was already three years at that point that we had been fighting it. But I was the governor twice elected by the people. And the United States don't mean a lot to some people. It sounds like a bunch of bullshit to say I swore in the Holy Bible as the governor to preserve, protect the rule of law, the Constitution. I just couldn't do it. And I knew it was all bullshit. It was all corrupt. They knew it was all corrupt. And it was all an effort to try to get me to admit it. And if I admitted it, then the truth would never come out. They can never be exposed for what they did. And because I wouldn't do it, and I fought back, because if I'm right, and I know I am, and they were doing to me what they ultimately ended up doing to Trump, weaponizing their uncontrolled power and unlimited resources to criminalize political things. If the truth comes out, they're going to be facing some sort of accountability, hopefully one day. And hopefully now with the new administration, they'll reform the
Speaker 2
laws. And we saw that the head of the FBI just stepped down. Yep. Kash Patel is going to come in and he wants to clean house. Let's take it back to the beginning. So I know they were bugging your phones, but you kind of knew they were bugging your phones, right? You know, when you come out of Chicago politics,
Speaker 1
which is a politics that probably has a larger proportion of corruption than other— That's how they got
Speaker 2
JFK elected. Other places, yeah. Right? The mob was involved in that.
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's well done. The River Wars made the difference. Mayor Daley, the first Mayor Daley was holding back the counting of those votes until he saw what Southern Illinois Republican area came up with. And once those votes were counted, then he let those River Wars come out. And Giancana, people like that were really instrumental in electing Kennedy. And then when Bobby Kennedy started going after Giancana, as the attorney general, they felt betrayed. Right,
Speaker 2
Lusso. Yeah,
Speaker 1
of course. But... A
Speaker 2
deal's a deal, right? I
Speaker 1
mean, apparently the father made the deal, right? But with me, it was... I always felt that there was a possibility that not only would they be listening but that somebody would set you up. And through the years in politics, people would. They'd come to you and offer you things that you knew were illegal. And you didn't do it because it was illegal. But also you felt this could be a setup. This could be the FBI trying to entrap you into doing something.
Speaker 2
And that's a common thing. Not an uncommon thing. So when you – what was the first charge that was brought against you? Or if you could just bring us back to the moment when you knew they were coming after you. I
Speaker 1
was elected the first Democratic governor in Illinois in November 2002, after 26 years of Republican governors. I first learned that they began to look into my administration and people around me in December of 2003. And I had been governor for 10 months, and they were already looking. And I knew it, which meant we got to be super extra careful because these people are scrutinizing us. On the one hand, I felt good. That puts pressure on people around me. People are doing work for me to do the legal things and not cross lines. I never imagined that the FBI and the Department of Justice and these U.S. attorneys who come out of the best schools would be so corrupt and dishonest. I felt like, okay, they'll look and see how we do things. If we make some mistakes along the way, we'll make adjustments. So they chased me for five years. And by the time they taped my phones, it was no surprise. There was all kinds of pressure at that time because they'd gotten a guy who was close to me and Obama, a guy by the name of Tony Oresko, who they probably convicted him of things that weren't crimes either. They were squeezing him to say things about me and Obama. He wouldn't do it. solitary confinement for three years to get him to invent crimes against us. He wouldn't do it. This guy's a stand-up guy. Obama sold him out. And he did more for Obama than he ever did for me. But I knew all of that. And so at the time when they began wiretapping my phones, which is late October 2008, everything I talked about doing with regard to the appointment of Obama's successor to the United States Senate, I felt it was very possible they were listening. How could they not? Because they were chasing me. They so much wanted to get me. And Obama and I both were in their crosshairs in the very beginning. But I think the politics of the changes, his political fortunes improved, and he looked like he was going to be the next president. And these people, these U.S. attorneys get appointed by the president. And these were Bush-appointed, Cheney-appointed prosecutors. And it's very unusual that the previous administration's prosecutors stay in office. When the new president comes in, they leave, as you see with Trump and the other parties, people come in. stayed in. And when they arrested me, what they wanted me to do was to basically say that I was guilty of trying to sell a Senate seat. And I was trying to sell it to another guilty party, who was the guy who started the whole thing, by the name of Barack Obama, who wanted to buy that Senate seat. Because that's where the whole thing began. It was Obama on election night. He sent an emissary to me to suggest a political deal because he wanted this woman named Valerie Jarrett to be appointed to his Senate seat. The governor appoints the Senate. Pause for a second and hold that thought. Jamie, there's feedback. You hear that?
Speaker 2
You hear that vibe? That. It was on the last podcast, too. Really? Yeah, it's gone. Just ended. All right. What was that? My mic toward his country. Yep, that's it. Okay. All right, we're back. So Obama was. So how did he try to negotiate? Like what when he wanted this person to take his Senate seat? Like what? What what what was set? How did it go down? How do things like that work?
Speaker 1
You use third parties, emissaries. So
Speaker 2
he doesn't have to meet with you. So you can say, Obama asked me. You have other people. So there's plausible deniability. To
Speaker 1
some extent, that's part of it, of course. But there's other dynamics that also, it's just a little bit easier to kind of test the mood of the other person if you have a third party who both the people like or respect. In this particular case, it was a labor boss by the name of Tom Balinoff. He came up to me election night in November 2008. That was the election you voted for, Obama. You and I are both guilty of that. And I was there that night. Chicago was magical, you know, historic. And it was great in the sense that finally America, you know, crossed a significant barrier. A black person can be elected president of the United States. Every black child growing up can now look and say, one day maybe I can be that. You know, there's the American dream and opportunity. So in that sense, it was a beautiful thing. So this Balinov guy comes up to me and he says, Barack called me last night. He said, I was pumping gas in this gas station in the South Loop area downtown Chicago. Brock called me last night. He said it was around – he even told me at the time like around 6.30 or 7 at night. And he asked me to come to you. He would like you to appoint Valerie Jarrett as his successor to the Senate. He wanted me to know what you want. I wonder if I can come and see you so we can discuss this. I said, sure, call me tomorrow. Now, that's totally legal and appropriate. He's not suggesting anything illegal. Obama just wants to make a political deal. But what happened was they criminalized it against me. So they criminalized
Speaker 2
Barack Obama trying to force his pick for Senate seat and you accepting it. Obama
Speaker 1
wasn't trying to force it. He was trying to make a deal to persuade me to do it. Or what would you get out of that? That's what we discussed for six weeks. And the FBI was talking about that. And we discussed all kinds of crazy ideas, a lot of good ideas. Spent two days talking about the possibility of appointing Oprah Winfrey. What? You might appreciate this. Yeah, I know. She's from Chicago. Do you remember when Trump won?
Speaker 2
Was NBC or one of these fucking people tweeted out, this is our president and it was Oprah? No, I didn't know that. Yeah. See how you find that? A major network tweeted out, this is our president. Wow. I was like, okay. So
Speaker 1
we spent six weeks talking about all kinds of ideas because this was, to quote me, fucking golden. I'm not giving it up for nothing. We got a chance to do something with this. And all of these ideas and thoughts were discussed with my governor's lawyer on all those calls, largely because I knew these people were chasing me. I wanted to be sure whatever decision I made, it was legal. We didn't cross lines or make a mistake. Maybe I missed something. And this was unique. And so I explored all kinds of ideas. I even spent one conversation. I think you might appreciate this. They played this at court in my first trial. My wife's sitting there, loving, dutiful, devoted, faithful wife, sitting in a courtroom every single day at both trials. And the media's in there every day. And they could do whatever they want, these prosecutors. The judge was their guy. And so they're playing all these tapes out of context. They're not allowing me to play tapes. We want to fill up the context. They only play 2% of the tapes. Denied 98% of them. To this day, those tapes are covered up because all kinds of people are on those calls. There wasn't anything illegal about it, but Rahm Emanuel, Harry Reid at the time was the Democratic leader. Every possible big-time Democrats on those calls with me. But to go back to some of these crazy ideas, I was trying to appoint someone who was black but not in politics. I was looking for a military hero of some sort. Everybody wanted me to make them senator, as you can imagine, in politics. I wanted to think outside the box, and we were testing all these ideas, including Oprah. And I'm talking to my lawyer, Quinlan, and I say,
Speaker 2
hey, Quinlan. There it is, NBC. Nothing but respect for our future president. If
Speaker 1
that's the case, I'm going to do what Ellen DeGeneres did. I'm going to move to England. I'm
Speaker 2
not going to move to England. I'm just going to mock NBC. So what does it say? Yesterday, a tweet about the Golden Globes and Oprah Winfrey was sent by a third-party agency for NBC Entertainment in real time during the broadcast. It is in reference to a joke made during the monologue and not meant to be a political statement. We have since removed the tweet. Right. Okay.
Speaker 1
So anyway, so I'm at the first trial. They're playing these tapes, and they give you these transcript books so you can see in writing what you can actually hear when they play the tape. And by then I had gotten used to trying to know what was coming so I can brace myself, you know. And, you know, they pick all the unflattering stuff. But none of it's criminal. And if you add it, you put the rest of the calls in there, it fills out the context. Of course. So in this one particular call, I asked my lawyer, Quinlan's his name. Hey, Quinlan, what's the rule again on residency requirements? How long do you have to live in Illinois to be a senator? And he said, just one day. And you got to be 30 years old, and you can be a naturalized citizen or American board citizen. So I say, because we were not finding the black military hero, why doesn't somebody go to California, ask Halle Berry, if she'd like to be a United States senator? She comes to Illinois for one day. I'll make her a senator, and maybe I could fuck her. I'm joking around. Right. Well, they play this, you know, in court. Oh, boy. And there's my wife sitting right there, you know. Oh, boy. And I look ahead, and I'm looking at the clock, and there's like 10 minutes to go before noon when the judge is going to recess for lunch. And I'm thinking if I could just get there before they play this tape, I could at least, you know, kind of prepare her for what's coming.
Speaker 2
Right.
Speaker 1
And I made it. And so I tapped her on the knee and I kind of showed her the book and I said, look, I was just kidding. And her reaction was, what are you, 16?
Speaker 2
Well, that's the same thing as like the grab them by the pussy comment. It's like guys talk like that. It doesn't mean they mean it. Guys talk like that all the time for fun it's not you know you could say it's misogynist it's this it's just shit talking it's what guys do and they know that the other person doesn't mean it that's why it's funny to say yeah
Speaker 1
and let's face it most of us like
Speaker 2
that stuff. Yeah. We like joking around about stuff like that. No doubt. It's fun. And the object. And everybody would laugh. And even if you never did anything or never even intended to do anything, you'd say something like that to get a rise out of your friends.
Speaker 1
So years would go by and
Speaker 2
I'm sitting in prison. I'm making one
Speaker 1
of my nightly calls home and my wife's on the phone. And that Billy Bush tape came out. What a slimy thing to do to Trump, right? And it comes out and everybody's writing him off as a president. He can't win. Pressure by his party to get out of the race. And my wife was, you know, offended by it. And she's telling me, you have two young daughters. How could you possibly defend this? And I said, let me take you back to a day in court, okay? Before you judge somebody else, look at your own husband. And I told her about the Halle Berry thing and what I said. And I said, this is, you know, as you explained it. And I think people have to realize that so many of these things that are taken out of context are taken out of context for a reason. It is to mislead the public and prejudice them against things.
Speaker 2
of it is very important because there is such a difference between a statement and someone tapping a phone while people are having a private conversation and talking shit. There's just, and did they read it or play it when you said that?
Speaker 1
Both. Yeah. Yeah.

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