The Lies of the Blagojevich Aides

Either for their own good or for his, Rod Blagojevich’s aides kept lying to him. A week ago, Blagojevich’s first gubernatorial chief of staff, Lon Monk, told the jury that he lied to his one-time boss on several occasions, at one time telling him that he was visiting his father in California who was undergoing cataract surgery. This morning Monk’s successor, John Harris, testified that he lied to Blagojevich about what his intentions were at a meeting Harris had with an associate of then-Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell.

In a wiretapped phone conversation the prosecution played for the jury, Harris and Blagojevich discuss the Chicago Tribune editorial board’s push for Blagojevich’s impeachment. Blagojevich, according to prosecutors, was hoping to leverage a deal between the Tribune and the state-run Illinois Finance Authority to facilitate the potential sale of Wrigley Field.*

Blagojevich asked Harris to put pressure on Nils Larsen, a Zell associate, to quell the negativity from the Tribune’s op-ed page. Harris said he didn’t follow through with Blagojevich’s order to explicitly threaten to compromise the deal if Zell didn’t fire the entire Tribune editorial board. However, Harris said he told Blagojevich that he would deliver that exact message. When asked why he didn’t by Assistant U.S. attorney Carrie Hamilton, Harris said it was because it would have been “wrong.”

Harris said that when he finally sat down with Larsen, “I asked whether or not they could help us tone down the adverse editorial coverage, and told him that continued negative coverage could cause the general assembly or others to derail the type of action we were trying to take.”

Harris said the governor wanted the Tribune to understand “there was about a $500 million at stake,” however the value of the state assistance in the transaction was less than $100 million.

“That’s all?” Blagojevich asked Harris in a telephone conversation.

*The original post incorrectly stated that the deal between Tribune Co. and the IFA was for the sale of the Chicago Cubs.