The entirety of the specific charges in the indictment only cover from October 22, 2008 to the present when they had phone taps in place. The bulk of the investigation and crimes that are being investigated are from before that period. This was largely new crimes. The hospital and Tribune Company charges are related to earlier investigations, but even then all of the specifics are new to anyone who have followed the investigation over the last several years.
This stuff isn’t even the core of the investigation. This is what they gathered off of a phone tap in a little over one one-half months. This is the tip of the iceberg. There have to be some federal agents and prosecutors kicking themselves for not tapping his phone before. If they knew it would be this easy they probably would have tried.
Insightful post. I’m bookmarking your page.
Here’s the thing I noticed when reading the indictment that I haven’t seen pointed out anywhere: there are two targets of the action, Blago and John Harris, whose names are consistently given in all caps while most everyone else is referred to indirectly (“Senate Candidate 5”, “ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s wife”, etc). But starting on p46, where Harris shows up again, his name is usually abbreviated to just HARRIS, while Blago’s name includes his first name every single time. I admit I don’t read a lot of indictments, but the variation in style within the single document implies to me that a simple BLAGOJEVICH would be ambiguous at some point—ie that they’re already planning to go after his wife.