>>>Blagie... Bloga... Blagev... "

Maybe it's "Blowjo..."

Bluh-GOY-Yeh-vitch.

Hopefully, it will be "Be-GONE-yew-bitch".

Oh, he will be leaving. But, his resignation is a valuable thing, youknowwhatI'mtalkinabout? You don't give up a valuable thing like that for nothing. He will try, and behind the scenes may well be trying, to use his resignation as a bargaining chip with prosecutors. You know, get something for it. Maybe a lesser charge, a reduced sentence, something.

My thinking is that this could easily be far from over. Blago knows stuff. Lots of stuff. Skeletons in closets, where bodies are buried, who made what deals, who has been on the take, etc. The burning question among the Made Guy Dems in Illinois and D.C. is how much of that he will spill, or be allowed by prosecutors to spill, to save his own sorry hide.

I mean, the timing of Blago's arrest raises questions. Generally, an investigation team will let something like this roll for a while to see where it leads. However, they didn't here. There are at least a couple of possible reasons: 1) Blago might cut a deal and appoint someone thereby calling into question the validity of the appointment and creating for the investigation team what we call a Big Problem, and/or 2) Obama (or more likely someone on his team) makes Blago an illegal offer on tape creating for the investigation team what we call a Freaking Huge Problem.

Bottom line? If what we think we know about Obama's involvement in this turns out to basically be all there is to know, he has got to be thinking: "Geez, I damn sure dodged a bullet on this!"

Letalis Maximus, Esq. (did I ever say how much I like your nom de plume? :-):

It would seem the timing of the arrest was due to The Chicago Tribune blowing the investigation. They reported that "Bluh-GOY-Yeh-vitch" was under electronic surveillance, he immediately backed out of his deal with Jesse Jackson Jr. to focus on defense (he's reported to have incurred up to $500K in legal fees to date) and the arrest was a very few days later.

At the point when no more forward looking crimes were being committed, with issues like destroying evidence and the like in the fore and the need to establish the narrative, it appears that Fitzgerald had to act. For a discussion of the latter, see Andy McCarthy about how "the most important thing, always, is to get a lot of the evidence into the public domain fast".

HGA:

Thanks for that. All of it.

I hadn't read that - although I guess I do now remember some discussion about the Trib being asked, or maybe why it wasn't asked (recollection is fuzzy), to hold off on the story. You may already know, but the next questions I would ask is 1) "Who leaked to to the Trib?" and 2) "Why?"

If the answer to "who leaked" doesn't automatically answer question 2, that is.

Letalis: You're very welcome.

I've seen not a peep, not even any speculation on the Tribune.

However they're a more direct player in this mess than would be normal, seeing as how Blago was demanding the removal of one or more of their editorial writers (one was named, but in the transcripts I've read the net might have been cast further) or else the state wouldn't help with ~ $100 million of ... tax relief? in the selling of the Cubs et. al., which given their parent's bankruptcy is something they need yesterday.

It wouldn't surprise me if they pulled the plug to get their transaction moving sooner rather than later. I think Blago may have thought they had a deal and that would have required them to remove that person or people and to stop the coverage he didn't like.

Here's a 6 day old article by Byron York on Fitzgerald's timing (very possibly where I got the idea in the first place) and independantly Andy McCarthy commenting on this in the context of a "Washington Wire" article yesterday in The Wall Street Journal which lays out all the details nicely, including identification of the known parties.