Projection : The externalization of blame, guilt, or responsibility as a defense against anxiety.
As his arrest date neared and it was made frustratingly aware that there would be no position in Barack Obama’s future administration, Rod Blagojevich began to believe a conspiracy was afoot.
As he continued to look for a way of availing himself of a vacant U.S. Senate seat, Blagojevich saw treacherousness not within his own cabal of aides and associates, but from various parts of the world around him.
On Nov. 12, 2008, just three weeks before his wrists would be cuffed, Blagojevich had a telephone conversation with his chief of staff John Harris. He had just spoken with Tom Balanoff, the head of SEIU’s Illinois Council, and received the discouraging impression that Obama’s team “want no part of me.”
Blagojevich ascribed it to the “Rezko thing,” referring to the predicament of his friend and fundraiser Tony Rezko, who had been found guilty of fraud in federal court five months before.
“I thin-, you know, it’s really, I get that I’m a big boy and I can handle that, but it’s really f—ing galling, this guy is more Tony’d up than I am,” Blagojevich told Harris. “ And it’s almost like they f—ing conspi-, made a concerted effort and they got the Chicago media to f—ing make me wear Rezko more. To f—ing dilute it from him.”
The “conspi-,” presumably, was a desisted “conspired,” an interesting word for a man in his position to have almost used. Even more interesting was that he stopped himself before finishing it, as if not wanting to say the word that would eventually be pegged to him in an indictment handed down by the U.S. Attorney.
Of the 24 counts against the ex-governor, five of them are conspiracy charges. Among them: conspiracy to bribe a racetrack executive John Johnston; conspiracy to commit extortion in relation to the Senate seat; conspiracy to commit bribery in relation to that Senate seat.
Few seemed more attuned to the whiff of manipulation and cageyness than Blagojevich under investigation from the Feds.
On that same day in November, after chatting with political consultant Bill Knapp, Blagojevich told his wife Patti that he was convinced Rahm Emanuel had been pushing Valerie Jarrett “real hard” to be appointed senator, so he could consolidate his own power within the newly-forming Obama White House.
Of the desired list of names that the Obama transition team had conveyed to him, Blagojevich saw nothing more than a ploy.
“Yeah, I mean look at this list, it’s a politically correct list,” Blagojevich told his wife in the wiretapped phone conversation. “So he can cover his ass. He’s got a white male in there, he’s got a white woman, he’s got Tammy Duckworth, veteran, veteran all of that and Asian…and Jesse Jr., the black candidate.”
None of this is to say that Blagojevich’s intuitions were incorrect. But for several weeks now, the jury has been made privy not only to the alleged conspiracies of the ex-governor, but of his increasingly brooding, suspicious-mindedness.
A jury can’t convict someone based on perceived psychological projection, but a jury can certainly pick up on it.
The trial continues this morning with lobbyist and former Blagojevich aide Doug Scofield returning to the stand.