Why did Obama resign his Senate seat so precipitously? Why not wait until January? Surely his vote would have been useful about now to block a filibuster on important bailouts. And as long as he was still a Senator, Blago could not appoint anyone. With the seat now vacant he can.

So, if Obama knew the trouble Blago could cause, then staying in the Senate could block an appointment until Blago is impeached. As it stands there is real danger that Blago does not appoint himself, but Alan Keyes.

It does cast Obama’s resignation of the seat in a somewhat interesting light. At the time, the reason given, I don’t know if it was by Obama/his staff or the media, was that getting an Ilinois senator in there quickly would give that person seniority over the rest of the incoming class. Does resignation of the seat suggest Obama has no inside knowledge, or inside knowledge? Maybe it suggests nothing.

Alan Keyes? Not sure where that’s coming from….

Regardless, the grand jury indictment process these days is far, far from absolute, either as to spirit or form. For starters, state, county and municipal courts throughout the country have responded to a strong motive not to have to submit to a grand jury every case of speeding, open liquor in a vehicle, walking about with a loaded firearm and the safety off, damaging a parking meter with a full flying karate kick, expectorating into the pedestrian boulevard, etc etc etc.

And over time, the responses to that understandable motivation have been stretched and kneaded and pulled and torn and stretched more than dough in a pizza parlor, to the point where its probably fair to say that grand jury indictments comprise far more the exception than the rule, certainly in most of the English-speaking world, and today even in its last bastion in the U.S.

Bear in mind that there are situations, many in fact, in which the grand jury ‘requirement’ is deemed fulfilled by the barest of submissions: a member of the investigating team could appear before the grand jury, be put under oath to tell the truth, and proceed to recite in more-or-less ’summary detail’ the state of the investigation – whereupon the d.a. or state or federal government prosecuting attorney may invite the grand jury to consider passing down one or more charges which flow logically from the facts recited to conviction, depending on the credibility of the witnesses referred to and reserving to the trial or petit jury whatever defence or defences that do not flow self-evidently from the description of the condition of the investigation. My point is that the decreasing use of grand jury proceedings may represent a drastic departure from the Constitution, but its not as if we’re really losing much if anything, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing, except to achieve some very particular good things which other countries have been able to achieve by other means anyway.

There are also situations where the need to preserve evidence is so great it’s not feasible to convene a grand jury to do so. That would include situations where the investigation is proceeding on a long-term plan to submit evidence to the grand jury when there’s enough known to likely encompass everything likely to or suspected of being involved, and all of a sudden, ’something’ comes up which puts strictly adhering to that plan at odds with the exigencies – which is what the ol’ smeller suggests here. [I should note that feds have made clear their intention to submit to some sort of pre-trial hearing; I’ve heard the term “grand jury” mentioned, but that can’t be right.]

When for whatever reason the prosecuting authority decides to proceed by ‘complaint’, then that complaint goes to a pre-trial or preliminary hearing, which often proceeds in a manner that is virtually indistinguishable from the ‘pro forma’ grand jury I described above. You may recall that the OJ Simpson case proceeded this way, with an arrest on a complaint, then preliminary hearing being conducted over a few days, then an indictment being filed from that hearing on that complaint, and thereafter a trial jury being selected and the trial itself taking place over a somewhat more protracted period of time.

Speaking from under my defending attorney hat, the preliminary hearing process is at least superficially more open and fair, in the sense that the person accused of the crime is a participant, but generally only when the prosecution decides or is practically forced to call the most interesting and controversial witnesses, because then, unlike with the grand jury process, the defence gets a chance to see how those witnesses give their evidence.

But, despite what gets said by ‘open government-open court’ types, very often I’m pleased, even thrilled on my clients behalf, to find the prosecution has proceeded by grand jury, because more often than not that means the investigating team has decided for some reason – sometimes having to do with their not being sure about what happened, sometimes having to do with an up front lack of confidence in their witnesses – and all kinds of things can be pulled out the prosecution with the assistance of a sympathetic trial judge the defence might never get hold of otherwise. There’s some risk that all our whining and complaining about ‘Star Chambers’ and ’secret courts’ and ‘ham sandwiches’ can be actually abused, or appear to be so – remember the Libby trial and the lengthy ‘grey mail’ hearing? – but even when a trial judge denies defense some material that in all rationality ought to have been produced that often sets up such an obviously successful appeal that either a useful plea bargain get offered or you get to tell your client to sit back and relax watch the big rehearsal unfold.

[Bear in mind that - and maybe its just me - quite often the dear person who has been accused of the crime has made it clear to me that he’s done something - not necessarily the something in the charges, but something - that speaking objectively tends to make the additional time of incarceration pending successful appeal somewhat more tolerable.]

Speaking from under my prosecuting attorney’s hat, there can be an awful lot of value in a well-tuned grand jury, on which I would refer again to the case of Libby by way of example.

So why proceed by complaint in the case of Blago? Well, for one thing, there may actually be some concern with him being a flight risk. I’m not suggesting this be taken lightly: we haven’t seen anything like all he said on the wires, and from what little we have seen, he and the little woman are quite a pair of lulus. You may recall that Fitz’ office prosecuted Conrad Black, and flight risk was the biggest focus on the prosecution right up until he left for the jailhouse. Anyway, to deal with a current flight risk, you can’t very well wait for an indictment that may come months down the line, during which the prime target is going to learn about his exposure and you’ll be stuck with nothing to keep him in place.

Especially when you’re about to execute a search warrant on his political playhouse.

Obviously there’s lots of other reasons, but I hope that’s enough to deal with your question.

Did you see mine and Ian’s points about Wrigley, btw? Is it unusual for something like the Cubbies to be excluded from a BK filing?

Why did Obama resign his Senate seat so precipitously? Why not wait until January? Surely his vote would have been useful about now to block a filibuster on important bailouts. And as long as he was still a Senator, Blago could not appoint anyone. With the seat now vacant he can.

So, if Obama knew the trouble Blago could cause, then staying in the Senate could block an appointment until Blago is impeached. As it stands there is real danger that Blago does not appoint himself, but Alan Keyes.

Good luck with only 50 (including Weaslemann) instead of 51 Dems blocking an appointment. They way I read it, it takes 2/3 of the Senate to reject an appointment (Reid is wrong). So now you need to convince 17 Republicans to remove a GOP appointed Senator.

So forget about a pick up in Maine by appointing Stowe to the cabinent. That is no longer in the works, if you want GOP help with Illinois.

If it’s not the same as an indictment, why does the only question seem to be what size necktie to hang him with?

What is the next step, legally, that is supposed to happen with a “complaint” like this?

Bob in HI

Note that the calls which Blago references where he was offered only “congratulations” for a Senate appointment acceptable to the Obama camp…these were in taps made AFTER those intial contacts. So why not produce the real killer…the tape with the Obama advisor? One is an actual OFFER, the offer is just secondary evidence.

I would suss that this suggests that whoever that Obama official was might have squealed, which enabled the search warrant.

FWIW, as I answered in the past thread, I think the first charge pertains to the three conspiracy attempts: pay to play, Trib, and Senate seat. But the evidence he pressents as supporting the third part pertains only to the Obama/SEIU stuff. Which suggests to me there’s some reason (closely related to the subject of this post, I’d wager) why Fitz was willing to stake his complaint on that stuff, but not the stuff pertaining to JJJ.

In other words, he has more evidence than he’s given (though clearly he gave enough for the Illinois leg to start impeachment), particularly as it relates to the stuff about the Senate seat.

There’s not Indictment here – not yet at least, and on the Senate seat sale, maybe not ever.

And again, for the record [?]: as to what Fitz is referring to as “the Complaint”, the 76 pager:

It:

[a] is not at all the equivalent of an indictment,
[b] has an entirely different purpose, and
[c] as it appears, is not technically “a complaint”, nonetheless
[d] does contain the rational basis for the announcing of more than one “complaint”
[e] including the two charges articulated in “the Complaint” associated with the 76-page Affidavit, yet
[f] also includes much which is only peripherally or tangentially related to the “the Complaint”.

I must seem like such an old fuddy duddy making these distinctions; but I think they’re important to intelligent discourse.