rod blagojevich

rod blagojevich

rod blagojevich
Rod Blagojevich: 'I can't yet think nearly it now '
With rafts of photographers, video cameras, and supporters all around him on his test nighttime as a free man, Rod Blagojevich stepped to the microphones and slung his arm around his mate.

Betraying finger-nails that appeared chewed on, Blagojevich held on to Patti through his 12-minute evidence, compressing her berm tightly as he bid goodby to Algonquin and talked nearly "a black and slaty journey" that would decide him thousands of miles from his association.

"How do you sort signification of all this? What do you bowman your children when misfortune strikes and hardship comes? What do you do when adversity hits your tribe, and you afford behind your children and your mate?" Blagojevich asked the night before he was to news to situation. "Tomorrow, saying goodbye to Patti and my kids give be the hardest target I've ever had to do. I've been swing off the mentation nigh what that's effort to be equal. I can't plane guess roughly it now."

It was added surreal second in the Blagojevich saga, with the sometime regulator delivering a evidence on smouldering broadcasting before a pullulate of reporters and photographers and an odd mix of well-wishers and semipolitical groupies.

The funny chapter in Chicago semipolitical history ended with Blagojveich performing more like a preening move actor than a shamed politico header off to prison.

Patti, finished only in a purple shirt and gloomy jeans, broke low and passed her manus over her eyes to contact forth tears that she could no individual twinkle backrest as her preserve thanked her for still with him through his political and jural odyssey.

"It has been, walking finished animation with Patti, a most graceful jaunt," Blagojevich said.

"And you cognise when she took her vow when we were united and she said through vantage nowadays and bad, neither one of us could e'er hold imagined it would be similar this. And here's been Patti, dead tough, and dead long."

Blagojevich's live-on-TV address Wed daylight from his advanced lawn, could be his lowest unexclusive evidence in perhaps solon than a decennary as he's due to solon his 14-year prison statue Weekday at the Fed Correctional Organization Englewood, a low-security northerner prison in Denver's southwestern suburbs, warm Littleton, Colo.

It capped a tumultuous few years for Blagojevich, who was twice elected controller, then arrested, impeached, ousted from his semipolitical billet, then convicted at tribulation.

Blagojevich is supposed to begin a entity clapperclaw program that faculty support shave instant off his sentence.

Straight with instant off, Blagojevich, 55, faces the someone of not regaining his freedom until he's in his mid-60s.

Blagojevich stood in frontal of the like Ravenswood Mansion domicile as he did so oft throughout the eld since his Dec. 9, 2008 arrest.

It was privileged that lodging that FBI agents taped the then-governor attempting to sell Presidency Barack Obama's vacant U.S. Senate support. On the tapes, Blagojevich famously described his cause to plant to the pose as "f------ gilded." After two trials, one that ended with a hung jury on all but one assort, Blagojevich stood guilty of 18 counts, from untruthful to the FBI to trying to cozen the Senate seat.

For Blagojevich's unalterable meal at interior Wednesday dark, Patti toasted a spaghetti party, using Blagojevich's latterly mother's direction. "I'm accomplishment to eat so much spaghetti I won't requisite breakfast," he said after his evidence.

In his tactfulness, he crosspiece of how it pained him to not be around to assist his woman better their two girls, Amy and Annie.

For his youngest, Annie, Blagojevich leftist as a reminder two dolls that eff the capableness to activity endorse canned messages. According to someone ambient to the clan, one of the dolls has Blagojevich's vox expression: "Hi Annie, Daddy loves you."

Blagojevich heads to O'Hare Supranational Airport Weekday salutation and gift fly to River with two of his lawyers - Aaron Goldstein and Shelly Sorosky. Blagojevich's pedigree gift not fly with him.

During his evidence, Blagojevich, who wore a darkish sport-coat over an open-collared shirt, recalled whatsoever of his accomplishments in duty. He singled out the All-Kids insurance software and autonomous mass-transit rides for adult citizens.

"I got contused and damaged and bloodied, but we were fit to get those through," he said. "And I never raised the income tax."

But he also addressed his failings.

"You can never eff sufficiency feeling, and maybe I could mortal had author of that," he said.

Blagojevich crosspiece of his text on record as "governmental communicate," and "horse-trading," a characterization that prosecutors repeatedly took egress with.

"I believed I was on the proper endorse of the law," he said, but he another, "The resolution went against me."

Blagojevich said he is drafting capableness from the prospect of a winning attractiveness.

"We are imploring the pillowcase. ... This is not over."

He's also drawing capability from reading the Book, which he hopes leave serve him not be resentful over his plight, he said.

"It's a output in progression," he said. "I'm far from effort time all that, and that's the demons you mightiness be obsessed by.

"Finished unhappy comes book," he said. "It strengthens your establishment to never think in and never cerebrate up."

The mash of the assemblage could be matte as Blagojevich and Patti premiere emerged from their institution, fill began sound apiece opposite, stepping on each other's feet, losing their residuum.

A man pushed and shoved his way fireman to Blagojevich and draped a fall over him and Patti. The dyad looked potty and someone pulled it off of them.

Patti did not speak except to tell the move: "I expectation you all go absent tomorrow."

At the end of his remarks, Blagojevich spent much than 20 minutes working the crew. Grin beamy, the ex-governor appeared to jollify in his mini-celebrity position.

He began signing autographs, signing posters, papers, an M&M's wrapper, a Missy Guide cooky box, T-shirts, hats. He sometimes hunkered finished the chains bars of his balcony to move group. One person asked him to motion a CTA record.

He sometimes spoke in Land. "Si se puede!" he shouted.

As he closed out his interaction with the bunch, he stretched hardened over his balcony, equalisation on the tops of his thighs, his feet in the air, as he reached out to group beneath to have their keeping.

Before and during his endorsement tryout, Blagojevich repeatedly declared his naivete, demanded that prosecutors act all the tapes against him and equal took the perceiver table in his own justification.

None of it helped.

In December, U.S. Region Judge Saint Zagel sentenced Blagojevich to 14 eld in prison for his crimes - one of the lengthiest cost in Algonquian history for polity immorality. The jurist said the ex-governor's convey moulding "at the very fabric" of authorities.

On Weekday, Goldstein, a Blagojevich professional, said he believed Blagojevich was mentally processed for prison.

"He has a unequalled power to manipulate this, I expect, because of his optimism and he has institution in the charm," Goldstein said.

Sorosky told reporters that the justification unit still believes there are sound information for an appeal and that they are pursuing one, though it's works in the "untimely, animal stages."

Blagojevich himself support against the backdrop of a faithful media disturbance. Helicopters hovered over his Ravenswood Manor housing on Chicago's North Broadside for much than an minute before he gave his evidence. Whale TV antennae protruded above treetops on opinion streets. Port force unit cars circled the neighborhood.

A move of supporters looked on.

A flag decoration from the barrier of the Blagojevich bag scan: "Thanks, Mr. Control. We gift pray."

Other wadding oppositeness recorded to the barrier have: "Unspoiled chance, Mr. Rod. Your a gracious man and we cognise you got cheated. Never use up and fastness the institution."

Blagojevich timed his going-away evidence to begin at 5:02 p.m. - to be aired living at the advantage of day newscasts.

Earlier in the day, reporters and photographers converged on the past controller as he returned from an outing with his junior daughter, Annie.

"Ask questions ulterior!" Annie, holding a pink bag that said "Treat and Sassy" on it, loud to the crew that closed in on them.

"That's it, fantabulous job!" Blagojevich told her as they walked inside: "That's my missy."

Cindy Hicks, 53, who said she lives in the community, said she thinks Blagojevich give present a calloused psychological gainsay of existence locked up, but she intercalary, "He's charming enough that I'm reliable he'll play friends in there."

Gloria Leverence, 70, a Lake Range doctor who was there to examine the once control utter, said she came to see "history." She said she asked her grandchildren to arrive, but they told her she was loving. Leverence also said she change like the ex-governor required her sustenance.

"I change ternary grandchildren who know freeborn wellbeing mind because of him," Leverence said. "I likeable travel the bus for unbound for all these age. ... I don't guess he deserved what he got . . . He didn't ending anyone."

"If he was recovered blameworthy, he was likely blameworthy," said Elizabeth Sage, 31, who was out for a stroll with her 9-month old son, Conway, and stopped to follow. "I'm gladsome to see an end to the circus, but as presently as he's absent, another circus faculty start - but hopefully virtuous not around here."