Highlights of open arguments from Blago trial

From defense's arguments, Blago, a victim, was broke and didn't take a dime.

Sun Times:

“He’s broke! He’s broke!” Adam yelled. “And do you know why he’s broke, ladies and gentlemen? It’s not hard. He didn’t take a dime!”
Adam is animated, to say the least. He is whispering and yelling, putting his hands over his stomach, putting them into and out his pockets, pointing at the jurors, Rod, the prosecutors. He’s covering much ground, walking up to the witness stand, back to the defense table.
“This is the federal government,” he said. “The same people chasing Bin Laden are chasing him!”
Rod is not writing anymore. He is sitting with his hands folded.

From prosecution arguments, Blago was deeply in hock to sell Obama's Senate seat.

The prosecutors have identified a motive for Rod Blagojevich’s frantic efforts to sell the US Senate seat. He was deeply in hock…
[Assistant U.S. Attorney Carrie Hamilton] said Blagojevich’s $170,000 per year salary was not enough to cover the debt Blagojevich and his wife were incurring.
Hamilton said the money from Rezko took care of some of it, but Blagojevich and his wife were approximately $200,000 in debt in fall 2008.
The prosecution said naming Obama’s Senate seat replacement was the key to solving Blagojevich’s financial troubles and what his next career move would be.

More...

[Hamilton] showed jurors a chart of the family’s debts in the fall of 2008 - $200,000 in “consumer debt and lines of credit against their home,” she said.
Rod Blagojevich didn’t know how to fix his money troubles, Hamilton said. He didn’t even know if he was going to run for governor again.
“He had no career plans for what he was going to do and no plans of what he was going to do with this financial situation,” she told the jury.
“For Governor Blagojevich, his golden ticket arrived on Nov. 4, 2008,” she said. That’s the day Barack Obama was elected president, giving Blagojevich sole rights to replace him in the Senate.


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The trial resumes Wednesday morning at 9:30 am.