Dead Meat Walks the Plank December 6th

Jontel Kassidy, Senior Capital Correspondent

Blago is next to be sentenced, on December 6.  Conventional wisdom among the Crook County media pundits is that, since Tony Rezko drew 10½ years, Dead Meat is facing the realistic prospect of even more time.

The prosecution said that Tony was “uncooperative”; even though he volunteered to go to jail before he was sentenced.  (Who gave him that advice?)  If the intent was to rack up goodwill points at his sentencing, it didn’t work.  All it did was give him a preview of the future – at least until his friend Barack springs him with a commutation of his sentence.  (Is Vegas posting odds on that yet?)

But for Dead Meat, there’s no commutation, no pardon, no escape on the horizon coming from the White House.  Blago and Barack didn’t have that special, symbiotic relationship built, literally, on bags of cash that once linked Tony and Barack at the wallet.

So what’s Dead Meat to do to mitigate the depth of the water he’s to fall into when he walks the plank on December 6^th? How might he, unlike Tony, “cooperate?”

He can’t relate details about the former Chicago corruption days of the POTUS, and, thereby, shave off jail time. The U.S. Attorney’s Office has done a stalwart job of protecting Chicago’s favorite son through the whole sordid affair that’s whirled around Tony and Rod.  Blago starts talking about Chicago Obama and he might get life without parole!

He can’t squeal on Attorney General Eric Holder’s association, once upon another time, with the effort to endorse a mobbed-up casino in Rosemont. Holder is Patrick Fitzgerald’s boss. How would that work? – Blago fessing up that Holder’s law firm was to get $300 g’s for certifying that the people behind the casino were all former Eagle Scouts and fine, church-goin folks, when he knew otherwise. No joy there for Blago.

So does he tell on the current Governor’s Chief of Staff for what he might have done as Tony’s Chief Financial Officer? Naw, that’d be small potatoes. Besides, who cares? He has some dirt on the current Gov himself? Yawn.

Or, maybe he details how Rezko’s close business associates Dan Frawley and Dan Mahru participated in…oh, serial bad behaviors of interest?  Nope. You don’t use a big fish to catch smaller ones.

Okay, suppose Blago does a core dump on Illinois corruption, names names, give dates, outlines plots and pinpoints where the bones are buried, metaphorically speaking, of course.

Maybe he exposes details of the nefarious world of a longtime, high-profile, corrupt, senior alderman.  Or, tell true tales about the Daley’s.  Rahmbo might like that, but it wouldn’t help Blago.

So just what information, what “cooperation”, does Blago have to offer now that he knows how deep the water may be when he walks off the plank on December 6^th?

Is there even anything he can tell that will make the outcome any less catastrophic for him?  Or, would his prosecutors just as soon he say nothing and vanish quietly into the federal penal system? Sort of like Norman Hsu did – remember him? You probably don’t, and that may be just what the U.S. Attorney’s office is hoping for. That Dead Meat disappears down the federal rabbit hole and in, say, 15 years, no one notices when he walks out with short gray hair, his children grown, Patty remarried, a self-defeated man. Not a pretty picture.

Not looking good for Dead Meat.