Judge rejects Blago petition

CHICAGO – A federal judge has turned down a request from impeached former Gov. Rod Blagojevich to have Chicago’s top federal prosecutor and his staff thrown off the corruption case against him.

Chief Judge James F. Holderman of U.S. District Court said in his three-paragraph order issued Friday that “no legal precedent supports the granting of the relief sought by the defendant Blagojevich in this motion.”

Blagojevich said removing U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald from the case was necessary because the prosecutor had made inflammatory remarks about him at a news conference after the then-governor was arrested Dec. 9

He said Robert Grant, special agent in charge of the Chicago FBI office, made similar remarks. He said Fitzgerald also went over the line in making public transcripts of wiretaps of Blagojevich conversations that should have been sealed.

Among other things, Fitzgerald said Blagojevich had been on “a white-collar crime spree” that would make Abraham Lincoln “roll over in his grave.”

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, Randall Samborn, would not comment on Holderman’s order.

Holderman didn’t get into the specifics of the remarks Fitzgerald and Grant made at the news conference where the charges against Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were unveiled. Nor did he close the door on Blagojevich making the same argument again.

Blagojevich and Harris are charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to commit fraud and solicitation of bribery. Holderman has set an April 7 deadline for the government to back up the charges by getting an indictment from a grand jury.