The Law Offices Of Thomas Glasgow - Monk Plea Deal | Video Transcript

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[GRAPHIC: ABC 7 News]

ANNOUNCER: Chicago's number one news. This is ABC 7 News at 4:30.

LINDA YU: Lon Monk cuts a deal with prosecutors, pleading guilty to corruption charges and agreeing to testify against his former boss, ex-governor Rod Blagojevich. Monk was one of Blagojevich's closest advisers. He had served as his campaign manager and his chief of staff.

[GRAPHIC: Monk Plea Deal]

ALAN KRASHESKY: In this plea agreement, Monk reveals many potentially detrimental details about the dealings of the former governor.

BC 7's Investigative Reporter Chuck Goudie is joining us now with more on the plea deal reached today. Chuck?

[GRAPHIC: Monk Plea Deal]

CHUCK GOUDIE: Alan, Linda, if you think of this whole thing as a jigsaw puzzle, the Blagojevich prosecution then Lon Monk would have to be considered the first piece.

Mr. Monk knew Blagojevich from the time they were in law school, roommates in California. He says they were planning the corruption with Blagojevich even before the first inauguration. It is Alonzo Monk, Blagojevich's first chief of staff who could be the first insider witness against the ex-governor when trial starts.

[GRAPHIC: Rod and Lon jogging]

CHUCK GOUDIE: Lon Monk, a frequent jogging partner of Rod Blagojevich over the years today admitted that he ran afoul of the law from the very start of Blagojevich's run for Illinois governor. This morning it was a somber walk for the 51-year-old Monk into Chicago's federal courthouse. U.S. District Judge James Zagel was waiting to take Monk's guilty plea worked out with federal prosecutors.

[GRAPHIC: Sketch]

CHUCK GOUDIE: Standing before Judge Zagel, Mr. Monk admitted to a corruption scheme and vowed to testify against Rod Blagojevich in exchange for a reduce two-year prison sentence.]

[GRAPHIC: Plea agreement]

CHUCK GOUDIE: This 31-page plea agreement by Blagojevich's two-time campaign manager and former chief of staff lays out details of pay to play meetings he had with the governor, corrupt businessman Tony Rezko and the late adviser Christopher Kelly.

According to Monk's plea bargain, the aim of the corruption was to produce a bonanza of cash for the governor and his friends by funneling state contracts to businesses that would pony up and investing state funds through crooked lobbyists with brokers who were also in on the schemes.

THOMAS GLASGOW: What this does for the government is it gives them another insider's view as to what was going on with Blagojevich while he was in office to show the jury exactly what occurred during the course of the corruption that they're alleging. And it allows the jury to then look inside the inner circle and see what's going on.

CHUCK GOUDIE: Alonzo Monk was represented today by Michael Shepherd, a former assistant U.S. attorney here, now a criminal defense lawyer in San Francisco. Both men left the Dirksen Federal Building without speaking to reporters.

The government's witness list and its case against the impeached governor is growing. Monk joins Jan Harris, another former Blagojevich chief of staff who has also pleaded guilty.

[GRAPHIC: Two men talking]

CHUCK GOUDIE: Tony Rezko is expected to testify as well, although the trial date is not until next June. In apparent effort to pay his own continuing legal bills, Mr. Blagojevich remains employed in New York where he is taping Donald Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice" show.

So Mr. Blagojevich is unavailable to respond to the plea deal by his longtime friend and one time major domo in the governor's office. A Blagojevich lawyer however denies the governor ever took part in corrupt meetings, ever took a dime of corrupt money or ever took a kickback on a state deal. So I guess you let the back and forth begin.

LINDA YU: It definitely will. Thank you, Chuck.

ALAN KRASHESKY: Okay, Chuck.

LINDA YU: Illness now has closed down...