Kendall Coffey on Blagojevich and Burris

CNN Newsroom: 12/30/2008

RICK SANCHEZ:     There was something that just didn’t smell right about that whole thing.  It’s interesting.  This thing begins with Blagojevich almost sounding like he’s stealing a line from the movie “Dave.”  Remember when Kevin Kline was in that movie, and I’m quoting Blagojevich.  Blagojevich says, “Don’t allow allegations against me to taint this good and honest man,” referring to Burris. Look, on the question of Burris, I want to bring somebody in now. This is Mark Sawyer; he’s professor of political science at U.C.L.A.  He’s also a friend of Burris.  To be fair, there’s nothing against Burris in this issue.  He read a fine prepared statement, may be a good lawmaker, may be a good representative.  Do you hear me Mr. Sawyer?

  (You see him shaking his head.)

All right, we’ve lost him.  Let’s bring in Kendall Coffey.  Kendall Coffey is standing by.  You’re a U.S. prosecutor – you were a U.S. prosecutor, but let’s supposed you’re one now.  You come out with this five-page indictment against this guy, and he does exactly what it seems that you were trying to get him not to do.   What’s your reaction?
 
KENDALL COFFEY:     Well my question is, “Is he crazy or is he crazy like a fox?”  Rick, consider the fact that everything Rod Blagojevich does at this point is with reference to his concern about spending a lot of prison time.  So what does this appointment do for him?  May be a couple things.  First of all he was accused of trying to sell the senate position.  Now he’s basically giving it to a perfectly honorable legitimate guy.  He’ll arguably use that in his defense.  But let’s get to what may be the even more conniving strategy of Rod Blagojevich.  He has now put an extremely prominent African-American in play, he says, to replace, you know, the ultimate respected African-American in politics right now, Barack Obama, and he’s gonna say, “No matter what the senate does, I did what I could.”  ““Those guys in the senate blocked it, and the secretary of state blocked it, but I did the right thing.” And how will that play, if at all, to African-American jurors on the Rod Blagojevich jury panel trial someday?  He may be trying to get a few points down the road because he surely needs all the points he can get.
 
RICK SANCHEZ:     I got to tell you, if we were to use as any judge of this the reaction that I’ve been getting so far here at CNN, and you know we put the news out and get immediate reaction on Twitter, we’ve got, you know, almost 40,000 people there – another 10,000-- so there’s a lot of people looking at this, and the reaction I’m getting so far – many of them from African-Americans is - this smells, don’t like it, and we’re not going to support this thing.  Which is interesting enough.  In fact, let’s bring in a MySpace comment real quick, and I’m going to get back to you in just a minute.  I I understand that we’ve got Mark Sawyer ready to go out in Los Angeles as well.

...Kendall Coffey coming back at us on this.  Do we go through the record now and find out if there is anything in the evidence that would show a connection between these two men because, obviously, I haven’t heard the tapes. You haven’t heard the tapes. Would you be curious to see that if you were a standing prosecutor in this case?

KENDALL COFFEY:     I would be stunned to see it. My guess is that Blagojevich picked him exactly because there was none of that, and that the defense may try to use this. They’re using, in effect, Burris, to create a defense and a defense witness to say, “Hey, this money wasn’t being stolen,” and if money was being taken in the car somewhere by Rod Blagojevich, he ended up, in effect, delivering it to the United Way at the end of the day. Because rather than sell this position to the highest bidder, he basically attempted to name someone who is eminently respected with the law enforcement background--in effect trying to create proof that he committed no crime.
 
RICK SANCHEZ:     This is a fascinating story.  My thanks to you Kendall Coffey, Rick Pearson with the “Trib” there, and, of course, Mark Sawyer out of Los Angeles.  We’re going to be shifting gears now….