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Jurors heard the prosecution describe Blagojevich as an audacious
schemer who lied to their faces on the witness stand. The defense
countered that the government only showed that Blagojevich talks a
lot. "He didn't get a dime, a nickel, a penny ... nothing,"
defense attorney Aaron Goldstein shouted just feet from the jury
box. Turning to point at Blagojevich, Goldstein added that the trial
"isn't about anything but nothing."
At one point during Goldstein's more than two-hour closing,
Blagojevich's wife, Patti, began to sob on a courtroom bench, wiping
tears from her cheek.
Pacing the crowded courtroom and sometimes pounding his fist on a
lectern, Goldstein echoed what Blagojevich said during seven days on
the stand -- that his conversations captured on FBI wiretap
recordings were mere brainstorming.
"You heard a man thinking out loud, on and on and on," he said.
"He likes to talk, and he does talk, and that's him. And that's all
you heard."
"They want you to believe his talk is a crime -- it's not,"
Goldstein added, casting a look at three prosecutors sitting nearby.
Lead prosecutor Reid Schar balked at that argument, telling
jurors in his rebuttal -- the last word to jurors -- that
Blagojevich went way beyond talk.
"He made decisions over and over, and took actions over and
over," he said.
He also mocked Blagojevich for testifying that he didn't mean his
apparent comments on wiretaps about pressuring businessmen for cash
or other favors.
"There's one person, this guy," Schar said, indicating
Blagojevich, "whose words don't mean what they mean."
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Blagojevich, 54, is accused of seeking to sell or trade President
Barack Obama's vacated U.S. Senate seat and trying to shake down
executives by threatening state decisions that would hurt their
businesses.
Blagojevich did not take the stand in his first trial last year,
which ended with a hung jury. That panel agreed on just a single
count -- that he lied to the FBI about how involved he was in
fundraising as governor.
Goldstein also took issue with prosecutors likening Blagojevich
to a corrupt traffic cop tapping on drivers' windows to demand
bribes to rip up speeding tickets.
"The hypothetical makes no sense," he said. A police officer
can't ever ask for cash, but "a politician has a right to ask for
campaign contributions."
Goldstein applauded Blagojevich for testifying, saying "it took
courage to walk up there" to the witness stand.
[Associated Press]
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