<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  With the judge hampering his use of the FBI tapes, it seems that Rod Blagojevich will be fighting the U.S. Attorney&amp;#039;s office with one arm tied behind his back. The prosecution has had him pinned against the turnbuckle for five weeks, beating him mercilessly with nasty recordings and testimony from his closest aides. BAM! He was an absentee governor, putting in as little as two hours in his office some weeks. Thwack! He set impossible goals for his top fundraisers and referred to them as &amp;quot;bullshitters&amp;quot; when they came up light. Crunch! A devastating audio clip on Thursday in which the governor vents about the Illinois public: I fucking busted my ass and pissed people off and gave your grandmother a free fucking ride on a bus, Okay? I gave your fucking baby a chance to have health care. I fought every one of those assholes including every special interest out there \u2014 who can make my life easier and better \u2014 because they wanna raise taxes on you and I won&amp;#039;t. I, I fight them and keep them from doing it. And what do I get for that? Only 13 percent of you all out there think I&amp;#039;m doing a good job. So fuck all of you. Not to mention the fact that I&amp;#039;m a fucking \u2014 criminal investigations and my family&amp;#039;s in jeopardy. This is the part of the trial where Rod Blagojevich doesn&amp;#039;t look like he can withstand another blow. &amp;quot;Yes, it&amp;#039;s painful,&amp;quot; he told reporters after this week&amp;#039;s round of recorded punishment. It seems that at any moment, the Feds will land the knockout punch. But the bell is about to ring: The prosecution plans to rest its case on Tuesday and the Blago defense can explode out of the corner with a loaded glove: jury nullification via his kinship with other working politicians. See, without the ability to redefine the tapes, the Blagojevich defense has to accept that the prosecution&amp;#039;s evidence is overwhelming and the jurors are going to find him guilty of breaking the law. But whether they convict him for it is another matter. Because by repeatedly invoking the powerful politicians who run the country \u2014 many of them from Illinois \u2014 his lawyers might just persuade the jury that Blagojevich&amp;#039;s crimes are the byproduct of a broken system. Placed under surveillance, any politician would be up on the same bevy of charges. The only just course, the defense could argue, is for the jury to nullify the charges by voting to acquit. The recent evidence shows more of what he has to work with. It was alleged that Tony Rezko sent prepackaged real estate commissions to gubernatorial spouse Patti in order to funnel money for Blagojevich family home renovations. Sound like any other prominent Chicago politicians we know? The governor was again heard venting about the strain of governing and how he needed to start making money. You sure that wiretap wasn&amp;#039;t meant for Wasilla? Another tape captured Blago&amp;#039;s discussion of filling a Senate or cabinet post while Patti could imitate Tom Daschle&amp;#039;s wife and get a job as a high-paid D.C. lobbyist. A witness said Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., was cognizant of Blago&amp;#039;s plot to exchange Obama&amp;#039;s Senate seat for $1 million in donations. And that&amp;#039;s just the last two days. Nullification would be the jury&amp;#039;s way of saying that while Blago violated the law, he did not violate the prevailing standards by which politicians conduct their business. And for that, it&amp;#039;d be wrong to send him to jail. One problem with jury nullification is that it&amp;#039;s selective justice. If Blagojevich can&amp;#039;t be convicted for these crimes, then what politician can? Are there twelve people on the jury who think that we punish our pols too lightly? Are there twelve people in the whole United States who think that? Which is why Blagojevich&amp;#039;s appeal would have to be more of a personal approach. He&amp;#039;d have to do the double duty of becoming a highly sympathetic figure in the jury&amp;#039;s eyes (which is possible) while convincing them that politicians they already revere do unpleasant things when they&amp;#039;re not looking. Nullification is not a pretty strategy, and the defendant* seems to have too much pride to do it successfully. But unless they find some other way to counter the prosecution&amp;#039;s evidence or circumvent Zagel, they may be left with no other choice. *Yes, there are actually two defendants in this case, but the prospects for Robert Blagojevich, who has distanced himself from his brother from the very start, are looking quite good by comparison. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a7842/blagojevich-defense-strategy-070910/>