Rod Blagojevich | Video Transcript

View this video here.

ANCHOR: Well now that Illinois' former governor is officially charged with government corruption, Rod Blagojevich now faces a tough legal battle in court. Blagojevich was of course charged on a 19-count federal indictment that accused him of trying to auction off President Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat among a slew of other crimes. And joining us today is our legal expert, attorney Tom Glasgow to give us some legal perspective on what's ahead for the former governor. Good to see you.

THOMAS GLASGOW: Good morning.

ANCHOR: Now we're struck by yesterday the difference in the way these, the indictment itself came down as opposed to the December news conference with Patrick Fitzgerald. Very quiet.

THOMAS GLASGOW: Well, I think part of that stems from a defense motion that was filed recently in front of Judge Holderman. And the, the motion essentially tried to get the prosecutors excluded from the case based on those December 9th statements.

Judge Holderman in his ruling said, look, I'm not going to exclude or preclude you from filing this motion in front of someone else. He didn't believe that there was any legal authority or basis for the defense to make that motion, but thought that the proper judicial officer to decide that would be the one that the case was ultimately assigned to and that's now Judge Zagel.

ANCHOR: Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. What kind of challenges does Blagojevich's legal team--you've got the tapes, you've got all this--they've got apparently what they believe is a strong case. What kind of challenges do they, do they face?

THOMAS GLASGOW: I think they're going to have a lot of challenges based on the fact that you've got a RICO violation, a RICO and conspiracy violation which is incredibly easy for the prosecution and very difficult for the defense to defend against.

This was designed to take on organized crime. And the U.S. Attorney most likely had to go up the chain of the command to the highest levels in the Justice Department in order to get authorization to use this in a political prosecution.

Now, that being said, Mr. Blagojevich is going to have to defend against these statements, the out of court statements by the other people involved in the crime.

ANCHOR: Wow.

THOMAS GLASGOW: It's a hearsay exception, so all of that's going to come in; all those tapes are going to come in. John Harris is cooperating with the government so therefore they're going to now have a face behind the tapes to be able to come in and testify and give you spicy testimony during the course of the trial and give you that insider's view much like when, when you saw the Ryan prosecution.

ANCHOR: What about this big media blitz? How will that play, and can they use that, can the prosecution actually use that against them?

THOMAS GLASGOW: Well, anything that Blagojevich has said it can be used against him. And during the period of time from the 9th until now, he has continually put himself out there in order to have more and more and more press. Is that going to hurt him in the long run? I do think it is because they're going to be scrutinizing those statements and utilizing any statement that they can against him in the courts.

ANCHOR: Now this whole thing was allegedly about money. Can he even afford a good defense?

THOMAS GLASGOW: He's saying that he can't. They've frozen the--Friends of Blagojevich, he's not going to be able to use the access to that money to pay his legal fees. He doesn't have a job currently. If he doesn't have a job, and this is going to be a very, very expensive because just the copying costs alone is going to be extensive.

The $20 million that I believe the law firm spent, or alleged to have spent on Ryan's campaign, or Ryan's defense, that's a lot of money for somebody to do pro bono. I don't know whether or not he's going to be able to afford that. If he can't, he may ask the court for a public defender paid for by the federal defender program.

ANCHOR: Right. And that's over--the people will be paying for that even.

THOMAS GLASGOW: Taxpayers again would be paying for the defense in this matter.

ANCHOR: Well we will no doubt be talking to you a whole lot more about this one. Good to see you always my friend.

THOMAS GLASGOW: It's always good to see you.

ANCHOR: We'll be right back after this.