Was Rod Blagojevich more incompetent as a governor or as a crook?
That's the question that lingers after digesting the case summary compiled by federal prosecutors and released yesterday.
Time after time, the document says, Blagojevich came up with fundraising schemes so outlandish and blatantly illegal that his advisors — even those who ended up getting indicted themselves — had to rein him in at every turn.
And in many instances, the schemes failed to produce the pot of gold envisioned by Blagojevich.
For example, in 2005, Blagojevich agreed to furnish a $2 million state grant to refurbish a charter school in Chicago.
Work on the school began in spring 2006. But by fall of that year, the money still hadn’t arrived, and contractors threatened to stop work.
When the school's congressman (believed to be Rahm Emanuel) called to check on the grant, he was eventually told that the hold-up was in the governor’s office. Blagojevich, prosecutors say, wanted some fundraising help in return for freeing the grant money.
But a deputy governor decided not to forward that message to the congressman. According to the proffer filed by prosecutors, the deputy governor later told a lobbyist that “what Blagojevich was proposing was both stupid and illegal.”
As a result of the governor's actions — he refused to pay the money in a lump sum, as promised — the state had to arrange five separate grants for nearly $2 million in expenses at the school.
Blagojevich has said that the proffer reveals “nothing new,” and that he looks forward to acquittal at trial. He had argued against the release of the proffer, saying it would prejudice future jurors.
Another example contained in the proffer: In 2008, the governor decided to support a change in Medicaid billing rates that would provide millions of dollars in added revenue for Children's Memorial Hospital.
Robert Blagojevich, the governor’s brother and now co-defendant, then called the hospital's chief, the proffer says.
“We would like for you to raise $25,000 for the governor.”
The executive balked.
“Children’s CEO was upset after the call,” according to prosecutors. “As a result, Children’s CEO decided that he would not talk any further with Robert Blagojevich, and instructed his staff not to forward any calls from Robert Blagojevich.”
As of his arrest in December 2008, Blagojevich had not directed any further work on the Medicaid rate increase.
In the proffer, the actions of the governor and his associates also sought to benefit Blagojevich's wife, Patti.
When Blagojevich's friends couldn't get her a job as a state employee, he threatened to appoint her to a paid state board.
His board of choice was the Pollution Control Board, whose members were paid upward of $100,000 per year.
But he abandoned the idea when he was told she was unqualified and that the board "met regularly and involved considerable work, which Blagojevich said was not the type of paid position that he was looking to get his wife."
Instead, the governor turned to the private sector. Since his wife had a license to trade stocks, he pushed his staff to find her a job with a brokerage house that did business with the state.
But a series of job interviews for Patti amounted to nothing. Blagojevich told staffers he wanted to prevent the financial firms that failed to hire his wife from doing business with the state, the proffer says. But staff members never relayed the threat to the financial firms, and never told the governor that his retribution had failed.
Patti's job interviews were necessary because one of the few Blago schemes referenced in the court filings that actually proved lucrative was falling apart.
Convicted felon Antoin Rezko had been paying a $12,000 monthly retainer to Patti for make-work at his real estate company, the proffer says. But media attention on Patti's real estate work led the governor to seek other work for her.
The most notorious allegation against Blago — that he tried to sell Barack Obama's old Senate seat — came because the governor was worried about being jobless after leaving office.
“Blagojevich expressed concern that he was not very employable,” prosecutors wrote. “As time progressed and it became clearer that Blagojevich would have the opportunity to name a senator, Blagojevich repeatedly expressed an interest in personally profiting through naming a replacement senator.”
Yet he did not heed admonitions that this was something he simply could not do.
“Despite repeated warnings from others that he could not personally profit in any way,” according to the document, “Blagojevich continued to suggest methods in which he could personally profit from the naming of a senator.”
He was still making calls about it until his arrest on Dec. 9, 2008.