When Blago Gets Home Let's Talk About Calls He Got From Pritzker

CHICAGO — Gov. J.B. Pritzker sure didn’t appreciate President Trump’s decision to grant clemency to his federal wiretap buddy, Rod Blagojevich.

“Illinoisans have endured far too much corruption, and we must send a message to politicians that corrupt practices will no longer be tolerated,” Pritzker said in a statement.

“President Trump has abused his pardon power in inexplicable ways to reward his friends and condone corruption, and I deeply believe this pardon sends the wrong message at the wrong time.”

I assume “wrong time” means while Pritzker is still in office.

[COMMENTARY]

Because if Blagojevich gets home and wants to talk — and he loves to talk — that might be bad news for the billionaire occupying his former office.

Pritzker and Blagojevich used to hop on the phone and bounce political schemes off each other while the FBI was listening. Pritzker even told Blagojevich his ambition to hold public office was like his belly — "large." Blagojevich talked about ways that he might be able help.

Here's one of their chats, courtesy of an FBI wiretap:

Blagojevich: "Are you a lawyer?"

Pritzker: "Yeah."

Blagojevich: "There's an AG that I appoint."

Pritzker: "Ooh, that's interesting."

Blagojevich: "I mean I'm not promising. I'm just saying these are all scenarios."

It's safe to say that the prospect of Blagojevich blabbing about what they weren't promising each other isn't an ideal scenario for Gov. Pritzker as the feds swirl around Springfield.

As the Sun-Times almost points out, “Pritzker faced criticism himself during his campaign for governor when” … well, that’s where the paper owned by some of Pritzker’s top supporters stopped mid-sentence in an early edition and instead mentioned the TV cameras camped outside Blagojevich’s place.

Let me fill in what the story left out, even after it was updated.

During the 2018 Democratic primary, word got out about part of the conversation caught on an FBI wiretap of Pritzker giving Blagojevich racially charged advice on who to pick to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Obama.

Here’s an excerpt of Pritzker’s recorded conversation the Sun-Times didn’t mention:

“But if you’re forced to put an African-American in the spot, which my guess is, you’re not forced to do anything, but my guess is a lot of pressure to do it, of all the African-Americans I can think that are sort of like qualified and vetted and people will say, ‘Oh, that’s, you know, that’s that’s a pretty good pick,’ the one that’s least offensive and maybe gets you the most because it gets you that secretary of state appointment is Jesse White,” Pritzker told Blagojevich.

Pritzker even enjoyed Blagojevich’s, er, off-color joke: “You can argue he’s, you know, he’s got a lot in common with Obama — he’s black and white. Ha.”

Pritzker chuckled. A “mild ‘heh, heh,’ is how the Tribune described it, as Blagojevich said, “How stupid is that?”

“That’s good,” Pritzker said. “That’s good.”

Personally, the ironic twist of that story is that Pritzker escaped the controversy unscathed and a satirical cartoon about his racist advice to Blagojevich got me fired as executive editor of the Chicago Reader.

That was two years ago. I’ve never talked about the attempts made by then-Sun-Times CEO Edwin Eisendrath to censor editorial content published in the Reader criticizing Pritzker, whose candidacy was publicly backed by several of the paper’s owners.

I pushed back on ownership, ran with a cartoon critical of Pritzker, and got canned. Dressing up the news at the Sun-Times to suit Pritzker continued, however.

And that was pretty much the end of talk about Pritzker’s disturbing take on race politics recorded by the FBI and his relationship with Chicago’s corrupt celebrity governor.

He was “forgiven” and elected with the support of politicians who appear to be tangled up in ongoing federal corruption probes. In return, the governor donated millions of dollars to a Democratic party campaign war chest controlled by House Speaker Michael Madigan, whose closest allies have been raided by the feds.

Now, Pritzker wants us to believe that Blagojevich's early release is some kind of signal to crooked politicians that Illinois can go back to corruption as usual? Seems like phony political outrage to me.

Partisan politics aside, Blagojevich spent eight years in prison for his crimes. Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke got sentenced to nearly seven years for murdering Laquan McDonald, a black teenager. Even U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin has said he supports a reduced sentence for Blagojevich. Many times, in fact.

It seems pretty clear Blagojevich got lucky that he was on a hit TV show with President Trump, the only guy who could reduce his sentence and let him come home.

Like Trump, Blagojevich is an easy target for a billionaire governor dog-paddling to keep from sinking into the cesspool of corruption within Illinois’ Democratic party, a cesspool Pritzker helps fund.

If Trump didn’t let Blagojevich out of federal prison six years early, Pritzker could have won re-election and served out a second term without having to worry his felonious predecessor might reveal more unsavory details of their chats that didn’t get leaked to the press.

Once Blagojevich gets back to Ravenswood Manor, though, there’s no telling what the ex-con might say about the ways Pritzker tried to wield influence over the corrupt political status quo back in the day.

Let’s talk about it, Rod. It's the perfect time.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and Emmy-nominated producer, was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN. He was a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

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