Blagojevich Busted

CHICAGO (Sun-Times Media Wire) ― A Sun-Times Exclusive: It was May 2008, and Robert Blagojevich was back at his alma mater to give the commencement speech to the University of Tampa's graduating class.

The successful Nashville businessman and longtime military officer saw it as a special moment. He was honored to have been asked back, honored to return to the school where he had fallen in love with his future wife over long talks in the library.

When his speech was over, students lined up to ask if he'd mentor them in their job searches. He gladly handed out his phone number.

Afterward, the brother of Illinois' controversial then-governor, Rod Blagojevich, sat with his wife, Julie, along a breezy boulevard, soaking in the good feelings and the warm air.

"We thought our lives had peaked," Robert Blagojevich recalled in an exclusive interview with the Chicago Sun-Times. "We sat there in the breeze, smoking a cigar, saying how good life was."

Lost in the memory, he punctuated the words: "How. Good. Life. Was.''

Bam! Bam! Bam!

The 6:20 a.m. pounding on the door rousted Rob and Julie Blagojevich from their bed.

It was Dec. 9 -- months after the commencement address in Tampa -- and someone was banging on the door of their Chicago condo.

They thought it was a prank, or a vagrant.

Instead, two FBI agents, flashing badges and armed with warrants, stood unsmiling outside.

"We want you to open the campaign office," one demanded.

Four months earlier, Rob Blagojevich had agreed to head Friends of Blagojevich, his brother's campaign fund. Now, he held the office keys.

"What if I don't do it?" he asked.

"We'll break the door down," an agent replied.

Blagojevich, a retired Army commander, said he needed to get into some decent clothes.

"You look fine," he was told. "Come with us."

He insisted on changing. As he pulled on jeans and a sweater, Julie Blagojevich called the governor's wife, Patti.

That's when they found out: The governor, Rob's kid brother, had just been arrested.

Rob Blagojevich, 54, got in his car, and the FBI followed him to the North Ravenswood Avenue campaign office.

"I can't believe this is happening," he thought.

A dozen FBI agents greeted him at the office. He unlocked the door, and they told him to leave.

"There's some Cokes in the refrigerator," he told them. "But I expect you to pay for them."

Later that day, he and his wife watched the drama unfold on TV.

In a nationally televised news conference, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald accused Rod Blagojevich of taking Illinois to a "new low" with a political "crime spree" that would make Abe Lincoln "roll over in his grave."

The charges were explosive. Among them: an accusation that the governor had tried to sell the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by Barack Obama's election as president.

"We sat there in horror, numb and horrified at what had happened," Rob Blagojevich said. "The hyperbole. The incredible exaggeration."

He said he talked back to the TV: "A crime spree? What crime spree?"

Then he heard Fitzgerald say something that dropped like a bomb: "Fundraiser A."

"'Oh s---," Rob Blagojevich said aloud. "That's me."

• • • • • •

In the months that followed -- while Rod Blagojevich went on a media tour and Patti Blagojevich went on a reality show -- Rob and Julie maintained their public silence.

But they agreed to break that silence with a wide-ranging interview about the events that have transformed their lives, taking them from relative obscurity in Nashville, Tenn., to front-page headlines and TV crews on their front lawn.

With their attorney Michael Ettinger, they spoke with a Chicago Sun-Times reporter during a trip from their home in Nashville to visit their son Alex in Chicago.

They talked of being unjustifiably pulled into a national scandal.

"I am frustrated with the government because I believe he is being held hostage by them," Julie Blagojevich said of her husband. "I believe that they indicted Rob to get his brother to plead."

Rob Blagojevich, who spent 21 years in the Army, said he has always lived by the rules and takes it as a personal affront that the country he has served has, in his view, turned on him.

"We're not a perfect people, but I'm not a criminal," he said. "This is just not fair. It's absolutely not fair."

And though his brother has frustrated him at times, Rob won't turn on him.

"I do not plan to plead guilty. I plan to go to trial. We're co-defendants, and we are not guilty on those charges," said Rob Blagojevich, who was paid $12,500 a month as fund-raising chairman. "I would not testify against my brother."

The Blagojevich brothers are accused of talking over a wiretapped phone about improper campaign solicitations -- targeting, among others, U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who wanted the Senate appointment.

Rob Blagojevich had only recently become involved in his brother's political business. A lifelong Republican who speaks with a slight Southern drawl, Rob Blagojevich didn't get involved in his brother's politics as Rod Blagojevich was ascending from state lawmaker to congressman to governor. In 2006, he volunteered during his brother's second-term gubernatorial campaign run, canvassing neighborhoods and fund-raising in ethnic communities.

The brothers, once close, had grown apart, even distant, as adults, he said. Then, after a career in banking and real estate, Rob Blagojevich agreed last August to head his brother's campaign fund.

The governor had been dogged by investigations that led to the indictments of his two top former fund-raisers -- including Tony Rezko, who was convicted in June 2008 of wide-ranging corruption. He reached out to his brother. He told him he needed someone he could trust at the helm of his multimillion-dollar Friends of Blagojevich campaign fund.

"We knew about allegations, and we knew about investigations," Julie Blagojevich said. "Rod assured us that he was not doing anything wrong. We understood that the allegations were really behind him, the investigation was really behind him."

Taking the job also would give her husband the chance to spend time with his "best friend," their 26-year-old son Alex, who works for a national brokerage firm in Chicago, she said.

Beyond that, Julie Blagojevich said, she couldn't forget the pleas of Rob and Rod's mother, Millie, that they should always stick together, how she'd tell them: "When we're gone, you two only have each other."

Their mother had often cried to them about her own brothers and how they'd grown estranged.

"She never wanted that to happen to her two sons," Julie Blagojevich said. "It was important to me for Rob and Rod to maintain a good relationship. It was also important to me to hope that Rod might see what a wonderful brother he has."

With Julie's OK, Rob assumed his post in August.

Four months later, Rod Blagojevich was in handcuffs, soon to be booted from office by the Illinois Legislature.

By spring, Rob Blagojevich was under federal indictment -- on two wire-fraud charges.

Next June, the two brothers, together, are expected to face trial in a Chicago courtroom.

Chief among the charges: that the ex-governor instructed his brother to tell a Jesse Jackson Jr. friend he needed to put up "tangible" campaign contributions if he wanted the governor to appoint Jackson to the Senate.

"You gotta be careful how you express that and assume everybody's listening, the whole world is listening," Rod Blagojevich is overheard telling his brother on a wiretapped conversation, according to the criminal complaint. "You hear me?"

• • • • • •

The brothers were tight growing up in Chicago. Rob Blagojevich said he played the part of big brother easily. He came to his brother's aid when he mouthed off to bigger kids in the neighborhood -- a common occurrence.

But when he left for college in Tampa, he said he and his brother grew apart.

"We didn't really know each other as adults," Rob Blagojevich said. "I left Chicago to go to college. I never came back except as a visitor. We were very, very close growing up. But then he went his way, and I went mine."

Rob Blagojevich won a military scholarship and, after graduating cum laude, went on active military duty. By 25, he was living in Germany, had distinguished himself in the Army and was in charge of three Pershing nuclear missiles.

He moved back to the United States, and his career in financial services took off. At one point, he was in charge of $3.5 billion in trust assets with First American, then Tennessee's biggest bank.

Meanwhile, his little brother bounced around to different colleges before going to law school and eventually entering Chicago politics. "He wasn't winning the scholarships in this family," Rob Blagojevich said, laughing.

Rob Blagojevich declined to discuss the specifics of the criminal case. But he pointed to a exchange last November between himself and Roland Burris, who eventually got the Senate appointment. The secretly recorded conversation was made public as part of a U.S. Senate ethics inquiry. Burris can be heard telling Rob Blagojevich that he's feeling conflicted, that he wants to give to Rod Blagojevich's campaign fund but worries how it would look as he sought the Senate seat appointment.

On tape, Rob Blagojevich presses Burris to donate to his brother. But, regarding the Senate seat, he's heard essentially telling Burris: Get in line, that others also were seeking the appointment.

"How I conducted myself with Burris is how I conducted myself with everyone when no one was looking," Rob Blagojevich told the Sun-Times.

Julie Blagojevich said she has listened to all of the tapes and can't understand why her husband was charged.

"My husband is an innocent man, wrongly accused," she said. "He's done nothing wrong. He's been portrayed to be the bagman for his brother. . . . He is so not that person. He's the most honorable, forthright, direct . . . moral person you will ever, ever meet."

Rob Blagojevich said he spent years building a good reputation as a businessman in Nashville. Then, after his brother's arrest, he found himself searching for a criminal defense lawyer. He wanted a bulldog, someone known for his acumen in federal court. He said he found one in Ettinger, who assembled a team to transcribe the thousands of hours of tapes in the case.

A court order bars them from discussing the contents of the tapes. But Ettinger said the tapes ultimately will tell the whole story -- and that he'd like them made public as soon as possible. "We want them out," Ettinger said.

Now, facing criminal charges of his own, Rob Blagojevich admitted having some frustrations with his brother. But that will never erode their bond, he said.

"It'll be eternal brotherly love," Rob Blagojevich said. "That's never going to go away. Rod's a big boy, I'm a big boy. He can take care of himself. I got a lot of confidence that he'll be able to without me, you know, or with me. I mean, since we're co-defendants -- together. Otherwise, he's a big boy, he can take care of himself. I don't mean that in any negative way. He's a survivor."

--Natasha Korecki, Sun-Times

(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire © Chicago Sun-Times 2009. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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