Thursday, April 21, 2011

Mixed feelings for Blagojevich retrial, none of them happy

Rod R. Blagojevich, the governor turned prisoner turned reality television star turned radio talk show host, is scheduled to get a new trial starting as early as Wednesday, eight months after proceedings ended with a jury divided on most of the corruption counts against him.

A new trial — and Mr. Blagojevich’s return to the headlines — certainly were not part of the inauguration script for Rahm Emanuel, a fellow Democrat and a former White House chief of staff who takes over as mayor of Chicago next month.

“You don’t know what he’s going to say,” said Kent Redfield, a political scientist at the University of Illinois. “If Blagojevich takes the stand this time, he could dirty some people up. If anybody has vulnerability to that, it’s probably Emanuel.”

Redfield's comments were featured in an April 19, 2011, article in The New York Times.

Read the story online