Rod Blagojevich

How Damning Is The Burris Transcript?

Zachary Roth | May 28, 2009, 12:12PM

So what to make of the transcript of that phone call, released earlier this week, between Roland Burris and Robert Blagojevich, brother of the disgraced former Illinois governor?

The crux of the conversation -- which took place in mid November, before the then-governor's arrest -- involves Burris explaining to Blagojevich frere that he'd very much like to hold a fundraiser for the governor and otherwise help him politically, and is also interested in being named to Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat. But he's afraid of how things would look if he raised money for Blago, then got the Senate appointment. So he mulls organizing a fundraiser "in the name of" his law partner, for appearances' sake.

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Rod Blagojevich

Report: Burris Promised To Write Check To Blago

Zachary Roth | May 26, 2009, 5:50PM

The Blago-Burris affair has been simmering away quietly in the background for the last few months. And today brought some interesting news, via the Chicago Sun-Times.

Burris' lawyer said that last November -- about a month before Blagojevich picked him to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat -- Burris promised Blago's brother he'd write a check to the then-governor's campaign.

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Rod Blagojevich

The National Pay-To-Play Scams: What, No Chicago Connection?

Moe Tkacik | May 8, 2009, 1:37PM

Do the expanding pension scandals have a Chicago connection?

The pay-to-play probes currently scrutinizing controllers of public pursestrings from New York to New Mexico to Alabama have so many parallels to the sweeping Illinois investigation that turned Gov. Rod Blagojevich into a reality show candidate, we're kind of surprised they haven't overlapped more.

For one, they both revolve around questionable public pension fund investments and "swaps" contracts. In Illinois, the probe began with questions about millions of dollars in consulting and "finder's" fees collected by Republican lobbyist Bob Kjellander for directing a $500 million teacher pension fund investment to a Carlyle Group hedge fund and convincing another state pension fund to bet on an interest rate swap that generated big fees for Bear Stearns. Some of those fees, according to last month's indictment of Blagojevich, wound up in Blago's own bank account.

But back in 2004, when CDR Financial Products, one of the main consulting firms being under investigation in the scheme, tried to set up shop in Chicago, it got nowhere.

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