Smartest Guys In The Room

Smartest guys not always right in Blagojevich trial

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel are the smartest guys in the room.

And woe to those who forget that fact for they shall be sternly reminded.

The Blagojevich retrial put both men in the same room when Emanuel took the witness stand in Zagel’s court.

For a long time now, Emanuel has batted away reporters’ questions about specifically what conversations he had back in 2008 about filling Barack Obama’s former U.S. Senate seat. Not to mention what conversations he had with Blagojevich about the congressional seat Emanuel was vacating to become the president’s chief of staff.

In 2009, the Chicago Sun-Times’ Natasha Korecki first reported that a conversation might exist between Blagojevich and Emanuel about who might take Emanuel’s place in Congress.

As late as January of this year at a Sun-Times editorial board meeting, Emanuel was asked if there was anything to the story that he wanted Blagojevich to appoint ally Forrest Claypool to keep his seat warm until Emanuel could return to it. (Something that was unconstitutional, though Emanuel didn’t appear to know it.)

Emanuel’s answer last January was, “No. Look. The White House has done a report. There has never been any sense of any kind of issues like this . . .”

The Blagojevich defense team begged to differ. And it wanted Zagel to allow them to play an undercover recording of a conversation between Emanuel and Blagojevich. That conversation, taped by the feds four days after Obama’s 2008 victory, was a “just between you and me” little talk about Emanuel handpicking his congressional successor.

Emanuel was asking Blagojevich to appoint Claypool “for like one term or two max,” suggesting Claypool could then go off to the Cabinet, allowing Emanuel to reclaim his seat. (Claypool has said he knew nothing of this.)

“I will not forget this . . . I appreciate it,” Emanuel assured Blagojevich, according to a transcript of the call. “That’s all I am going to say. I don’t want to go, you and I shouldn’t go farther.”

If I didn’t know better, I would think that sounds an awful lot like another tape the prosecution played in which Blagojevich warns his brother to talk like the “whole world is listening.” And seems to connect to yet another call between Blagojevich and consultant Fred Yang in which Yang warned, Emanuel “wants you to break the Constitution of the United States.” And Blagojevich responds, “Right, that’s a favor worth doing.

Inteldocu: Enron - The Smartest Guys In The Room

Based on the best-selling book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, a multidimensional study of one of the biggest business scandals in American history. The chronicle takes a look at one of the greatest corporate disasters in history, in which top executives from the 7th largest company in this country walked away with over one billion dollars, leaving investors and employees with nothing. The film features insider accounts and rare corporate audio and video tapes that reveal colossal personal excesses of the Enron hierarchy and the utter moral vacuum that posed as corporate philosophy. The human drama that unfolds within Enron's walls resembles a Greek tragedy and produces a domino effect that could shape the face of our economy and ethical code for years to come. The documentaries on this blog do not represent any consensus of beliefs. I do not expect that visitors will sympathize with everything they will find here, for some documentaries will flatly disagree with others found here. The blog is meant to inform people by a diversity of angles to look at issues. I do not accept responsibility for the views given in the documentaries.

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