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Joe Rogan Experience #2245 - Rod Blagojevich

This episode is brought to you by The Farmer's Dog. Get 50% off your first box by heading to http://thefarmersdog.com/rogan today! Rod Blagojevich is a former Illinois governor, removed from office in 2009 and imprisoned for corruption in 2012. Following his sentence commutation by President Donald Trump in 2020, Blagojevich has worked as an author, speaker, and political commentator. https://x.com/realBlagojevich

Rod BlagojevichguestJoe Roganhost
Dec 18, 20242h 47mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 1:53

    Why Blagojevich says he went to prison for politics, not crimes

    1. RB

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

    2. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) How are you, sir?

    3. RB

      I'm good. How are you?

    4. JR

      Very good to meet you, man.

    5. RB

      Nice to meet you.

    6. JR

      I really enjoyed you on Tucker Carlson Show. Shout out to Tucker. Uh, it was a very eye-opening podcast. And, you know, uh, whenever someone is, uh, convicted of ... (deep breath) You know, any, any political figure, any person of power that's, uh, convicted of corruption, you automatically assume that they're guilty. And after listening to you on Tucker's show, I was like, "Oh, Jesus." Like, it was such an eye-opening podcast and such a disappointing one too. It was so disturbing to hear your version of the story, which was so different than the version that was, you know, put out on the media and it was just, "Oh, corrupt politician goes to jail. Oh, he went to jail? He must be guilty."

    7. RB

      Mm-hmm.

    8. JR

      And then you hear your take on it and you're like, "Oh, God." It's very disturbing and, uh, I just wanted to show you this just before we get rolling.

    9. RB

      Hmm.

    10. JR

      Biden just released a bunch of people, multiple Chinese spies and an individual convicted of possessing child pornography. (laughs)

    11. RB

      (laughs)

    12. JR

      I think he's, he's released ... H- how many people has he, uh, pardoned to date?

    13. RB

      I saw a number of 1,500.

    14. JR

      He's going ham.

    15. RB

      Yeah.

    16. JR

      Everybody can get their ... Sign your checks, send them in, let's go. (laughs)

    17. RB

      (laughs)

    18. JR

      (sighs)

    19. RB

      Wow.

    20. JR

      Wow. Possession of child pornography-

    21. RB

      Yeah.

    22. JR

      ... should be like, you shouldn't be able to pardon for stuff like that. It's like there's certain things, it's like, come on.

  2. 1:53 – 4:26

    Plea pressure, repeat trials, and the claim of a rigged prosecution strategy

    1. RB

      You know, I spent, uh, almost eight years in prison, for politics not for crimes, and I'm happy to answer any questions you have about any of it 'cause I didn't do it. It was all politics. But the first three years, almost three years, they put me in a higher security prison and I'm in there with, uh, Crips and Bloods and Gangster Disciples and Sinaloa Cartel drug dealers.

    2. JR

      Why would they do that? Wh-

    3. RB

      They were squeezing me and pressuring me 'cause they wanted me to basically say I did something that I didn't do. They wanted me to plead guilty to non-crimes.

    4. JR

      So, they wanted to scare you by putting in, you in with dangerous people?

    5. RB

      Yeah. And, uh, and to really punish me 'cause I fought back in a way that no one really does except for Trump. I mean, I was fighting back when they brought those charges against me everywhere and I was calling them criminals. And they are.

    6. JR

      What did they expect you to do? Did they expect you to just take a sentence, a lower sentence?

    7. RB

      Right.

    8. JR

      Confess?

    9. RB

      Exactly.

    10. JR

      What did, what did they offer you?

    11. RB

      They tried me twice after the first trial, where they failed to convict me on their fake corruption charges. They were floating 18 months. And, uh, you know, s- s- there were a lot of people in my team, like my lawyers who thought that might be the prudent thing to do 'cause you really can't beat these people. The system is rigged. And when they really wanna get you, they'll just keep trying you and they'll get their judge who, to work with them and they'll, they'll ultimately convict you as they did me: by using unlawful standards to criminalize things that are legal in politics and government. So, the prudent thing, the safe thing was to, you know, cut your losses and, you know, take the short period, uh, prison time. But I felt ... You know, I wasn't a businessman. I suppose if I was a businessman facing something like that, you'd make a business decision, you'd cut your losses, you realize they're bleeding you financially, you can't afford lawyers, this is gonna be an endless thing. It was already three years at that point that we had been fighting it. Uh, but I was the governor, twice elected by the people, and you know how I did these votes don't mean a lot to some people, it sounds like a bunch of bullshit to say I swore on the Holy Bible as the governor to preserve and protect the rule of law, the Constitution. I just couldn't do it. And I knew it was all bullshit and it was all corrupt. They knew it was all corrupt. And it was all an effort to try to get me to admit it, and if I admitted it then the truth would never come out. They can never be exposed for what they did. And because I wouldn't do it, and I fought back, because if I'm right, and I know I am, and they were doing to me what they ultimately ended up doing to Trump, weaponizing their un- controlled power and unlimited resources to criminalize political things. Um, if the truth comes out, they're gonna be facing some sort of accountability hopefully one day, and hopefully now with the new administration they'll reform the laws. And, um-

    12. JR

      Well, you saw that the head of the FBI just stepped down.

    13. RB

      Yep. Yep.

    14. JR

      And Ash Patel-

    15. RB

      Mm-hmm.

  3. 4:26 – 10:28

    Chicago politics, entrapment fears, and when the investigation started

    1. JR

      ... is gonna come in and he wants to clean house. Let's take it back to the beginning. So, I know they were bugging your phones, but you kind of knew they were bugging your phones, right?

    2. RB

      You know, when you come out of Chicago politics, which is a politics that probably has a larger proportion of corruption than other-

    3. JR

      It's how they got JFK elected.

    4. RB

      Other places, yeah.

    5. JR

      Right?

    6. RB

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      The mob was involved in that.

    8. RB

      Yeah. That, that's well done. The-

    9. JR

      Yeah.

    10. RB

      River Awards made the difference. Mayor Daley, the first Mayor Daley was holding back those, the counting of those votes until he saw what Southern Illinois Republican area came up with, and once those votes were counted then he, um, he let those River Awards come out and Giancana, people like that were really instrumental in electing Kennedy and then when Bobby Kennedy started going after Giancana, they, as the Attorney General, they felt betrayed.

    11. JR

      Brett Lazo.

    12. RB

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      Yeah.

    14. RB

      Of course. But, uh-

    15. JR

      A deal's a deal, right?

    16. RB

      I mean apparently-

    17. JR

      (laughs)

    18. RB

      ... the father made the deal, right?

    19. JR

      Yeah.

    20. RB

      Um, but w- with me it was, uh ... I always felt that there was a possibility that not only would they be listening but that somebody would set you up, and through the years in politics, people would. They'd come to you and offer you things that you knew were illegal and, uh, you didn't do it 'cause it was illegal, but also you felt this could be a setup. This could be the FBI trying to entrap you into doing something.

    21. JR

      And that's a common thing?

    22. RB

      Not an uncommon thing.

    23. JR

      So, when you f- fir- ... What was the first charge that was brought against you or if you could just bring us back to the moment-

    24. RB

      Mm-hmm.

    25. JR

      ... when you knew they were coming after you?

    26. RB

      I was elected the first Democratic Governor of Illinois in November 2002 after 26 years of Republican governors.I first learned that they began to look into my administration and people around me in December of 2003. And I had been governor for 10 months and they were already looking. And I knew it, which meant we gotta be super, extra careful, 'cause these people are, uh, scrutinizing us. On the one hand, I felt, "Good, that put- puts pressure on people around me and people who are doing work for me to do the legal things and not cross lines." I never imagined that the FBI and the Department of Justice and these U.S. attorneys who come out of the best schools would be so corrupt and dishonest. I felt like, "Okay, they'll look and see how we do things, and if we make some mistakes along the way, we'll make adjustments." So they chased me for five years, and by the time they taped my phones, it was no surprise. There- there was all kinds of pressure at that time 'cause they'd gotten a guy who was close to me and Obama, a guy by the name of Tony Resco, who they probably convicted him of things that weren't crimes either. They were squeezing him to say things about me and Obama. He wouldn't do it. They put him into solitary confinement for three years-

    27. JR

      Oof.

    28. RB

      ... to get him to- to in- invent crimes against us. He wouldn't do it. This guy's a standup guy. Obama sold him out, and he did more for Obama than he ever did for me. Um, but I knew all of that, and so at the time when they began wiretapping my phones, which was late October 2008, everything I talked about doing with regard to the- the appointment of Obama's successor to the United States Senate, I felt it was very possible they were listening. How could they not? Because they were chasing me, they so much wanted to get me. And, uh, Obama and I both were, um, in their crosshairs in the very beginning, but I think the politics of it changed as his political fortunes improved and he looked like he was gonna be the next president. And these people, these U.S. attorneys get appointed by the president, and these were Bush-appointed, Cheney-appointed prosecutors, and it's very unusual that the previous administration's prosecutors stay in office. When the new president comes in, they leave, as y- you see with Trump and the other party's people come in. But these people stayed in, and when they arrested me, what they wanted me to do was to basically say that I was guilty of trying to sell a Senate seat and I was trying to sell it to another guilty party, who was the guy who started the whole thing by the name of Barack Obama, who wanted to buy that Senate seat. 'Cause that's where the whole thing began, it was Obama on election night. He sent an emissary to me to suggest a political deal 'cause he wanted this woman named Valerie Jarrett to be appointed to his Senate seat. The governor appoints the senator-

    29. JR

      Pa- pause for a second and hold that thought.

    30. RB

      Mm-hmm.

  4. 10:28 – 13:20

    The Senate-seat saga: Obama’s emissaries, Valerie Jarrett, and “political deal” talk

    1. JR

      box of fresh, healthy food at thefarmersdog.com/rogan, plus you get free shipping. Just go to thefarmersdog.com/rogan. Tap the banner or visit this episode's page to learn more. Offer applicable for new customers only. ... So Obama was... wh- so how did he try to negotiate? Like, what, when he wanted this person to take his Senate seat, like, what- what- what- what was said? How did it go down? How- how do things like that work?

    2. RB

      Uh, he used third parties, emissaries between two people.

    3. JR

      So that you're not... so he doesn't have to meet with you, so you can say, "Obama asked me." You have other people, so there's plausible deniability.

    4. RB

      To some extent. That's part of it, of course, but there's other dynamics that also, it's just a little bit easier to kind of test the mood of the other person if you have-

    5. JR

      Uh-huh.

    6. RB

      ... a third party who- who both the people like or respect. In this particular case, it was a labor boss by the name of Tom Balonoff. He came up to me election night in November of 2008. That was the election you voted for Obama, but you and I are both guilty of that.

    7. JR

      (laughs)

    8. RB

      Um, and I was there that night. Chicago, it was magical, you know, f- historic, and it was great i- in the sense that finally America, you know, crossed a significant, uh, barrier, a Black person could be elected president of the United States. Every Black child growing up can now look and say, "One day maybe I can be that." You know, there's the American dream and opportunity. So in that sense, it was a beautiful thing. Um, so this Balonoff guy comes up to me and he says, "Barack called me last night." He said, "I was pumping gas in this gas station at this South Loop area downtown Chicago. Barack called me last night." He said, "It was around..." He even told me the time, like around 6:30 or 7:00 at night. "And he asked me to come to you."... he would like you to appoint Valerie Jarrett as his successor to the Senate. He wanted me to know what you want. I wonder if I can come and see you so we can discuss this." I said, "Sure, call me tomorrow." Now, that's totally legal and appropriate. He's not suggesting anything illegal. Obama just wants to make a political deal. But what happened was they criminalized it against me and, uh, and, yeah-

    9. JR

      So they criminalized Barack Obama trying to force his pick for a Senate seat and you accepting it?

    10. RB

      Obama wasn't trying to force it. He was trying to make a deal to persuade me to do it.

    11. JR

      Well, what would you get out of that?

    12. RB

      Th- That's what we discussed for six weeks and the FBI was talking about that, and we discussed all kinds of crazy ideas, a lot of good ideas. Spent two days talking about the possibility of pro- uh, appointing Oprah Winfrey. Um-

    13. JR

      What? (laughs)

    14. RB

      You might appreciate this. Yeah, I know. She's from Chicago and-

    15. JR

      Do you remember when Trump won? They were, they were, s- uh, like, uh, was it NBC or one of these fucking people tweeted out, "This is our n- our president," and it was Oprah?

    16. RB

      No, I didn't know that. No.

    17. JR

      Yeah. See if you can find that.

    18. RB

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      One, like, a major network tweeted out, "This is our president."

    20. RB

      Hmm. Wow.

    21. JR

      I was like, uh ... Okay.

  5. 13:20 – 20:49

    Wiretap excerpts, jokes in court, and the “out of context” argument

    1. RB

      So we spent six weeks talking about all kinds of ideas.

    2. JR

      Okay.

    3. RB

      'Cause this was, to quote me, "fucking golden." I'm not giving it up for nothing. We got a chance to do something with this. And all of these ideas and thoughts were discussed with my governor's lawyer on all those calls.

    4. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    5. RB

      Largely because I knew these people were chasing me.

    6. JR

      Right.

    7. RB

      And I wanted to be sure whatever decision I made, it was legal. We didn't cross lines or make a mistake, maybe I missed something. And, you know, you, this was unique, and so I explored all kinds of ideas. I even spent one conversation, I think you might appreciate this, they played this at court in my first trial. My wife's sitting there, loving, dutiful, devoted, faithful wife, sitting in the courtroom every single day at both trials, and the media's in there every day. And y- uh, they could do whatever they want, these prosecutors. The judge was their guy. And so they're, uh, you know, they're playing all these tapes out of context. They're not allowing me to play-

    8. JR

      (laughs)

    9. RB

      ... tapes we want to fill up the context. They only played 2% of the tapes. They denied 98% of them. To this day, those tapes are covered up 'cause all kinds of people are on those calls. There wasn't anything illegal about it, but, uh, you know, Rahm Emanuel, uh, Harry Reid at the time was the Democratic leader, um, every possible big time Democrats on those calls with me. But to go back to, um, some of these crazy ideas, you know, I was trying to appoint someone who was Black but not in politics. I was looking for a military hero of some sort. Um, everybody wanted me to make them senator, as you can imagine, in politics. I wanted to think outside the box and we were testing all these ideas, including Oprah. And I'm talking to my lawyer, Quinlan, and I say, "Hey, Quinlan-"

    10. JR

      Here it is, NBC, "Nothing but respect for our future president."

    11. RB

      If that's the case, I'm gonna do what, uh, Ellen DeGeneres did, I'm gonna move to England. (laughs)

    12. JR

      (laughs) I'm not gonna move to England.

    13. RB

      (laughs)

    14. JR

      I'm just gonna mock NBC.

    15. RB

      (laughs)

    16. JR

      So what does it say? "Yesterday, a tweet about the Golden Globes and Oprah Winfrey was sent by a third-party agency for NBC Entertainment in real time during the broadcast. It is in reference to a joke made during the monologue and not meant to be a political statement. We have since removed the tweet." Right. Okay.

    17. RB

      So anyway, so-

    18. JR

      (laughs)

    19. RB

      ... I'm, I'm at the first trial. They're playing these tapes and they had, they gave you these transpic- transcript books so you can see in writing what you can actually hear when they play the tape.

    20. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    21. RB

      And by then, I'd gotten used to trying to know what was coming so I could brace myself, you know? And, uh, you know, they pick all the unflattering stuff, but none of it's criminal, and if you add it, you put the rest of the cop- calls in there, it fills, it fills out the context.

    22. JR

      Of course.

    23. RB

      So in this one particular call, I asked my lawyer, Quinlan's his name, "Hey, Quinlan, what's the rule again on residency requirements? How old do you, how long do you have to live in Illinois to be a senator?" And he said, uh, "Just one day. And, and y- you gotta be 30 years old and you could be a s- you can be a naturalized citizen or American-born citizen." So I say, 'cause we were f- not finding the, the Black military hero, "Why doesn't somebody go to California, ask Halle Berry if she'd like to be a United States Senator? She comes to Illinois for one day, I'll make her a senator, and maybe I could fuck her." I'm joking around.

    24. JR

      Right.

    25. RB

      Well, they play this, you know, in court.

    26. JR

      Oh, boy.

    27. RB

      And there's my wife sitting right there, you know?

    28. JR

      Oh, boy.

    29. RB

      And I look ahead and I'm looking at the clock and there's, like, 10 minutes to go before noon when the judge is gonna recess for lunch, and I'm thinking, "If I could just get there before they play this tape, I could at least pre- you know, kind of prepare her for what's coming."

    30. JR

      Right.

  6. 20:49 – 24:37

    Blocked tapes, alleged bait-and-switch in court, and linking his case to modern lawfare

    1. JR

      (sighs)

    2. RB

      And so I got up on the stand, Joe, and the judge had promised ... On the 20th of May, 2011, I thought this was the day I'd be vindicated. He said, "Look, if he agrees to testify, he can play the tapes to corroborate his testimony." 'Cause I was a lawyer and I was also a prosecutor at the state level, Cook County prosecutor, and I know how the system works and I know that if you get up there and you're saying certain things and one side has tapes of you saying something and you're saying stuff but you don't have tapes to corroborate what you're saying, the prosecutor's gonna simply tell the jury in closing argument, "Go back in the jury room and see how many times you hear what he testified to corroborated by those tapes. And if you don't find any tapes, then you know who's lying." I knew this. But when the judge said I can do it on the record, I felt beautiful. "I'll testify and then we'll play the tapes to back up my testimony." (smacks lips) So I get up there and I testify. Then when it's time to play the tapes, the judge won't allow them. It was a setup. And then the prosecutor does, does exactly what I knew they would do if those tapes weren't heard. He says, "Go back into the jury room and see how many times he talked about the, the Madigan deal," 'cause that was the big deal I was about to make before they arrested me. You won't hear a single tape, even though there were 102 conversations on that subject. They were all covered up and the jury didn't know those tapes existed. It's, it was a total fucking frame-up in a rigged criminal justice system, in a court that was rigged. And that's today's America. And why what happened to Trump is so important, they did it to him in those different courts where he, they got the convictions for things that weren't crimes.

    3. JR

      Yeah, there's multiple things that have changed our timeline, and one of the big ones is him being elected, because that means they dropped those cases and all that weaponizing of the justice system didn't work. If it did work, that is such an insanely dangerous precedent to set. When you see things like the documents case or the real estate case, which is the most disgusting one-

    4. RB

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JR

      ... pretending that Mar-a-Lago, that somehow or another someone was a victim because he o- overvalued Mar-a-Lago even though he paid all those loans back and the banks profited from it. There was no victim at all, and yet they fine him this fucking insane amount of money and try to say that Mar-a-Lago was worth $18 million.

    6. RB

      Mm-hmm.

    7. JR

      That is just such a slap in the face of anybody that understands ... first of all, anybody who understands property values in that area. It's preposterous to say that place is only $18 million. It's a fucking enormous property and the most expensive real estate in the United States, or one of the most expensive-

    8. RB

      Mm-hmm.

    9. JR

      ... places for real estate. And there was just so many of these cases over and over and over again that just right in everyone's face and v- very little pushback, no pushback from the media at all. They went along with it-

    10. RB

      Right.

    11. JR

      ... as if these 34 felonies for a bookkeeping error that is essentially a misdemeanor that's passed the statute of limitations and now you're marking it up-

    12. RB

      Mm-hmm.

    13. JR

      ... as a felony, but you can't even identify the felony? The whole thing is madness. And all these news organizations, because they don't like Trump, are going along with this insanely dangerous precedent, because if that goes through, well, what happens if Republicans get into office and you have some new Democrat that you really love, and this Democrat is a real challenge and a threat to the Republican, and they start doing the same fucking shit that you did? Or, is that what you want? You want us to be a banana republic just 'cause you don't like Trump? I mean, it just shows you how many people were willing to sacrifice all of their ethics, all the things that they believe in, what the Bill of Rights stands for, what the Constitution stands for, fuck all that, we don't want this guy to win. Throw it all away. And then you throw everything away. Then we have no freedom of speech, we have no nothing. It's all gone.The whole thing is so ... It's so m- mind-boggling how short-sighted people are in the name of wanting their side to win.

  7. 24:37 – 28:14

    From DOJ power centers to famous prosecutorial examples (Arthur Andersen, Weissmann, Enron)

    1. RB

      We- well said. I don't wanna sound like an egomaniac, but I gotta tell you, they got away with it with me, and they got emboldened then to say, "We can do it to a Democratic governor, the fifth-largest state in America. We can get away with it." Non fucking crimes that we make up shit and call them certain things that are sexy sounding, sale of the senate seat. That eventually was, uh, reversed by the appellate court. They could never uphold that unlawful standard. Three fundraising requests where there was no quid pro quo. I got convicted of that? None of it was personal corruption. Nobody said I even took a penny and they gave me 14 years 'cause I was fighting against them and exposing them. So it started, I really believe with me, and they got away with it with me and some of the same people, Comey, Fitzgerald, those people were doing it to Trump with Russia collusion stuff.

    2. JR

      Yeah.

    3. RB

      And some of the same people then went on and have been doing it as part of a, get this, organized political campaign that came right out of the Oval Office, out of the, the Democratic National Committee, the DNC, into the DOJ. They've corrupted the Department of Justice and the FBI, and they've corrupted the rule of law and the Constitution, and this is no small thing. And just because Trump won, because the American people are beginning to get it, doesn't mean we're safe. The Trump administration, God willing, is gonna do something very serious about this. If there's anything that he- this administration can do to make America great again is to protect our rights and our freedoms and to hold the people that do this accountable and make an example of them. Not to be vengeful, but because it's just, and because it send- sends a message to these unaccountable prosecutors have- who have no check and balance, that if they do this and frame innocent people, they're gonna be treated the same way as a dirty cop who plants a murder weapon to frame an innocent man.

    4. JR

      As they should be.

    5. RB

      Look at this guy, Andrew Weissmann on CNN. He's got a big spot at CNN, the legal expert. You ever see this guy?

    6. JR

      No.

    7. RB

      Anyway, he was a former US attorney and he made his name by destroying Arthur Andersen, a company that had all these people working for him in accounting company, nationwide, one of the biggest ac- accounting firms in America. He used a standard that wasn't lawful to get convictions on them. Eventually, United States Supreme Court took the case and they ruled nine to nothing, unanimous, that the standard that Weissmann used to prosecute An- Arthur Andersen was an unlawful standard. But the damage was done. That company went bankrupt. All those people lost their jobs. And this Andrew Weissmann gets promoted and becomes this legal expert and scholar on CNN. That guy, Fitzgerald, Comey, and people who do this, Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, they ought to go right to fucking jail.

    8. JR

      W- what was, what were they accusing this company of?

    9. RB

      Obstruction of justice, that they were destroying, uh, records and stuff. Um, but ... And that would've been a crime had they b- had they done it after they'd been subpoenaed, but they weren't subpoenaed. They had a right to do whatever they wanted with their records before anybody compelled them to, to produce them. It was obstruction of justice.

    10. JR

      And what was the accusation? Like what were they, uh, trying to get them on?

    11. RB

      Saying that they were destroying documents and evidence.

    12. JR

      About what though?

    13. RB

      About, uh, that their accounting worked for Enron, which was a real scandal.

    14. JR

      Oh. Yeah.

    15. RB

      Yeah.

    16. JR

      I saw The Smartest Man in the Room.

    17. RB

      Yep.

    18. JR

      That documentary, like jeez.

    19. RB

      Now-

    20. JR

      Anybody who doesn't believe in conspiracies, watch that.

    21. RB

      Jeff Skilling was in the prison with me.

    22. JR

      Oh, really?

    23. RB

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      Wow.

    25. RB

      Yeah, he was a ... H- he got a big sentence and then eventually they found prosecutorial wrongdoing and he was able to reduce it down from something like 26 years to 14. But he was there with me.

    26. JR

      (sighs)

    27. RB

      A- along with Smelly and Socks and-

    28. JR

      (laughs)

    29. RB

      ... Mr. B and V and G and all kinds of guys.

    30. JR

      I bet you met a lot of characters.

  8. 28:14 – 44:25

    Inside prison: pedophile ‘protection,’ SHU threats, and why he landed in higher security

    1. RB

      You know, it, it's a story that starts with one president, ends with another, and there's a governor in prison with Gangster Disciples, Sinaloa cartel drug dealers, pedophiles. That's what I meant to tell you. I was in there with something like 400 pedophiles.

    2. JR

      Jesus.

    3. RB

      Murderers, bank robbers.

    4. JR

      What do they do with the pedophiles in jail?

    5. RB

      They're a protected class in prison because everybody would fuck them up because of the nature of a lot of their crimes. Some of them are worse than others. Some are like this guy that got pardoned by Biden, which is unbelievable. Um, where they're into child pornography, but some a- were far worse than that. They harmed children directly.

    6. JR

      So how do they protect these people?

    7. RB

      You, uh ... It ... You get m- more than canceled if you even say something bad to them. You can't offend them. You can't call them a name.

    8. JR

      What?

    9. RB

      They ... That's their way of policing the other inmates who hate them and resent them.

    10. JR

      Really?

    11. RB

      Mm-hmm.

    12. JR

      So they're protected.

    13. RB

      Yes.

    14. JR

      Because the, the peop- the thing that people always loved about pedophiles going to jail-

    15. RB

      Yeah.

    16. JR

      ... is like, "Oh, there's gonna be some jail justice."

    17. RB

      Well, there is, notwithstanding their policy, the BOP's policy. The guy that was, um, Jared, the guy w- subway guy.

    18. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    19. RB

      Um, he ended up going to the same prison I was in after I worked my way out of the, that higher security prison, the one behind the barbed wire fence and got to a camp. Jared k- got to my prison 'cause it's a pedophile ... It's a prison that has a lot of pedophiles. Out o- out of the 950 guys, roughly, that I was in prison with there, there were about 300 to 400 pedophiles. And then there were drug dealers, bank robbers, some guys have committed murder. There were 2% white collar, Skilling one of them, one governor, me, right? Um, but those pedophiles, the sex offenders, you c- you can't call them pedophiles, and the derogatory term-

    20. JR

      You're not allowed to call them pedophiles?

    21. RB

      Can't call them pedophiles and you can't call them chomos. That's the inside prison name for these guys. It's a t-

    22. JR

      Chomo?

    23. RB

      Chomo. So I'm there day two in prison. I got 14 years ahead of me. They gave me a 14-year sentence. I mean, Trump pulled me out of there after eight. And, uh, I'm in there second day. It's ... As you can imagine, I write about this in the book, I mean, it's a hard experience, a long hard journey. It's heartbreaking in so many ways for me and my family and hard. But, uh, y- you know, I'm learning the ropes.... and, you know, I got all my fellow inmates there. And, uh, I'm hearing this phrase, this term, it's called, you know, chumos, fucking chumo. You know, that guy, you know, he's a chumo. They'd say that. And I'd say, "What's that?" And they would ... They told me. And so I was with one of my, uh, the, uh, case manager or somebody. They were giving me more of the information I needed for the stuff I had to learn as a new inmate. And I mentioned, "So who are these choomos?" And she goes ... And she goes, "Huh! You can't say that. It's not chumo it's ..." and she whispered it, "It's chumo. But you can't say that. That's strictly forbidden here. If you say that, you'll go to the SHU." Now, as ... So, "What's that?" I have to ask her. Well, the SHU was a special housing unit, S-H-U. The c- the vernacular was SHU, solitary confinement, and the way they police the inmates and punish them to varying degrees is you get thrown in solitary confinement. So if you just say chumo, that'll land you in solitary confinement. (laughs)

    24. JR

      For how long?

    25. RB

      Uh, maybe a week. (laughs)

    26. JR

      Geez.

    27. RB

      Yeah.

    28. JR

      That is so ... How?

    29. RB

      Yeah.

    30. JR

      That's so crazy that they protect pedophiles.

  9. 44:25 – 55:58

    Day one to ‘street cred’: media spectacle, inmate culture, and the gang ‘car’ system

    1. RB

      You've hit the bottom and now you're trying to ... You climb it back up, just from a time point of view. But that first day, I'll work backwards. I'll never forget the first night. After that long, long day that I, that I went through, you know, the media was covering me like I was O.J. Simpson. They were at my house at six- 5:30 in the morning when I s- kissed my little girls goodbye, my li- little Annie Bananny was eight years old at the time. She's in her pajamas, so she hugs and squeezes me. And my daughter, Amy, she was a sophomore in high school, she was 15. And we're all in the foyer. It's all dark because you got all these media trucks around your house. We live in a neighborhood, a normal neighborhood, just not gated, and they're all over the place. And so they look into your house, so we had to keep the lights off. Kissed my wife goodbye and my two daughters. The hardest thing I've ever do- did was saying goodbye to them, but you gotta be strong for them and you can't, you can't show those assholes in the media that you're f- dying inside, so you gotta be strong when you step out. Still kinds of film footage of that, when I left. And there's a helicopter that follows me, news helicopter, from my house all the way to O'Hare Airport in Chicago, like I was O.J. Simpson in that white Bronco. I call it the chapter My White Bronco Moment.

    2. JR

      (laughs)

    3. RB

      And, uh, and then when I got on the ... at the airport, there was this big gaggle of media there. And then when I get on the plane, these motherfuckers were (laughs) on the plane. They bought tickets, so I can't even like, you know, get ... give it a second to think about what just happened, me saying goodbye to my family and I'll be gone for, worst case scenario, 14 years. But if I behave myself, it'll be 12 and a half years, right? Good behavior. And then I land in Denver, and they're there. And so I'm trying to leave the plane, they're all waiting there at the gate. And then they ... The people in Denver were really nice, uh, th- er- at, uh, the airline. I think it was United Airlines. And they got me out a side door and they, they had a car waiting, so I was able to leave, and for a moment I thought I was away from the media as I'm about to drive to prison. But no, they caught us. They got o- they caught up with us. And I got there a little bit early, the prison, so I told my lo- one of my lawyers who was driving me, "You know what? We're like a half an hour early. I'm already giving up 14 years, I don't wanna give them 30 minutes more. Let's stop for a cup of coffee or something." So we went to this little restaurant, a little fast food place called Freddy's, in Denver, the Denver area, Littleton, Colorado. And, uh, it was really surreal because, uh, you know, people knew who I was and they were really warm and loving. I'm signing autographs. You'd never know I'm about to go to prison for 14 years. And, and then the time came to, to walk in. And I learned later that Trump was watching this, 'cause it was all live on television. And, and he had tweeted about it that day. I mean, I, I got a million reasons why I love Donald Trump. I was so alone. Everybody of prominence in politics and government and in the media, w- you know, were, you know, w- were calling me all these nasty things. And here's Trump, the only guy with, who had like a f- some authority and had a following, was the only guy saying, like, positive things about me. They were compassionate. They didn't ... He wasn't necessarily saying ... He was saying that I denied it and I wasn't ... you know, I'm entitled to a, you know, presumption of innocence. But there was compassion with Trump, and he tweets that day. You know, I learned later ... I didn't know it then, but I learned when I came home that he tweeted that "I see him walking into prison. He gets 14 years. Murders and rapists get four years. Do you think this is justice? I don't." Just a loyal guy to a guy that was on his show, 'cause I don't really know him that well. But it's just a ... It just, to me, says a lot about who he is as a person. But then I walked in and I get greeted by all these inmates and I was a ... People asked, "Were you afraid?" I wasn't afraid of anything. Uh, you know, my life was so, you know, uh, beaten down by what they did, I was so disillusioned, I was angry, there was bitterness, but I was mostly heartbroken and sad and missing my children f- fearful of my children, my wife. They were left alone. I couldn't protect them. People knew where we lived. The media made sure that everybody saw where we lived, 'cause they were always in front of our house. I was worried about their safety. I knew I had all those years to do. And, um, now I'm in prison and all these guys are watching me coming into their world on live television. So I had two things going for me in terms of h- my, my stock with the fellow inmates. Number one, I was a quasi, you know, sort of a se- I was a celebrity inmate. They just saw me come into their prison. Nobody gets ... walks into a prison on live TV. And the bigger, more part, the more important part, was-I got a f- what they call a 14 piece, that's the vernacular of how inmates talk. "He got a 14 piece," means he didn't snitch on anybody. See, anybody who gets a long sentence means they're getting punished 'cause they wouldn't talk about anybody. The guys who walk in with light sentences become immediately suspect by the inmates, it's the culture there, as snitches and they hate the snitches. Snitches are bitches who get stitches.

    4. JR

      (laughs)

    5. RB

      Right? (laughs) That's what they said.

    6. JR

      Sure.

    7. RB

      So I walked in there and I had immediate street cred with those guys, and they were, they were nice to me. They actually gathered together what little means they had and, and went to the commissary to get me necessities for my first week, toothbrush, toothpaste, uh, shower shoes. Um, just a gen- very nice, kind thing to, you know, me. These were drug dealers and bank robbers and, you know, tough guys, all tatted up, tough guys. G- you know, their gangs would be tatted on their heads and stuff, or on their, you know, biceps or something.

    8. JR

      Did you have to join a gang?

    9. RB

      I write about, I write about how the correctional officers wanted me to actually join the, the white group, the Aryan Brotherhood guys.

    10. JR

      The correctional officers wanted-

    11. RB

      Uh-huh.

    12. JR

      Why did they want you to do it?

    13. RB

      So I, in this, one of the chapters, the early chapters, it's, uh, I wasn't in prison for 27 hours before I broke my first prison rule, and they called me, "Inmate Blagojevich," you know, the c- "report to the lieutenant's office." And I had to be, they explained to me, this was the f- my first full day there was a ... my second day there, it was after my first full day when I walked in, and I got a chance to see the prison yard. And I walked around the yard with a couple of Black guys, one of, both from Illinois, one from the South Side of Chicago, gangbanger, drug dealer, um, name was Slim, and another guy named Walter Hill from East St. Louis, Illinois, and, uh, I was their governor, and they were really nice to me. And we walked around the track and we were talking about ... and I was interested in the facilities, you know. One of the things I was determined to do in prison was to work out a lot and to read a lot, and eventually, I read the Bible a lot. Like, if you want to talk about that at some point, 'cause that was so meaningful to me. But, uh, they called me in the next day because the word got out that I was walking the track with Black guys, and it was explained to me by the, the authorities there that prison's a very segregated place, that the, that the unwritten policy in order to keep order is that people need to be part of c- their, their own cars. They called it, the euphemism for gangs in prison is cars. What car do you ride with, ride in? And that they thought that for my own safety that, number one, I shouldn't be, you know, walking around with Black guys. I need to be part of a car, and I need to join the white car and go see these two guys, Cole and Sadness. Sand-

    14. JR

      Sadness?

    15. RB

      Sand-ness. His name was-

    16. JR

      Okay. (laughs)

    17. RB

      I thought it was Sadness too. Exactly. 'Cause I'm looking around, "Who's Saddest? Who's Sadness?" I'm looking for Sadness, right? His name was Sand-ness, and Cole was the leader. I think he was from Texas. And, uh, they s- they told me that I should go see them, and so out of respect for the c- the police officers, the correctional officers, I, I said, "Okay, I'll go see them." But I made it clear to them, "Listen, I don't give a fuck." Because they told me, "Look, when you get into a conflict with somebody, and it's inevitable, 'cause you're in prison with a bunch of guys for a long time, there's gonna be all kinds of disputes. You want the window open, the other guy wants it closed. You didn't put the weight back in the weight room like he would have wanted. There's all kinds of shit that's gonna hap- the conflicts that develop between guys living close like that. The way we keep order is we keep the races and the e- and the different ethnic groups separated. They all p- become part of their individual cars. You sit with them in a commissary, I mean, at the cafeteria, they call it the chow hall. You, uh, you work out with them, you walk the track with them, you're polite to the other groups but you don't really get friendly with them, because if you have a conflict with somebody, your car will protect you, especially if it becomes a conflict with somebody from another race or another group of people." In the prison I was in, there were a lot of Black guys, a lot of Latinos, a lot of guys from Mexico, seen a lot with drug cartel people, uh, a lot of G- Native Americans, there were Pacific Islanders, uh, and of course white guys and sex offenders. They were their own group. And so they all pretty much m- m- you know, rode in their own cars, their separate cars. But I told them, "I'm not, uh ... Look, I don't fear anybody. If somebody wants to fucking kill me here in some ways or put, put me out of my r- misery, I'm not gonna be doing some d- you know, kind of thing that, like that. It just, it, you know, it's racist. I'm not doing that. I'm gonna ... Whoever's nice to me, I'm gonna be nice to them, and I'll respect your rules. I won't sit with the Black guys or with any Latino guys, I'll sit with the white guys. Um, but I'm not gonna ... I, uh, unless you're ordering me, t- tell- and telling me I can't walk with those guys or talk to these guys, I'm gonna keep doing it." And they said, "Well, we can't do that 'cause th- it, this is an unwritten way that we operate and keep order in prison." And then they told me something which I respected. They said, "Lookit, y- y- you're not in the real world here anymore. Y- this is not a place where you could be a civil rights advocate, uh, or an activist, a civil right activist. This is prison. Y- you don't have the same rights here that you have out there. We can't order you not to have relationships or con- conversations with people from another race, but we can order you to, you know, to stop doing stuff that could be counterproductive to us keeping safety. So if you're gonna sit with somebody outside your race in the chow hall, that's a direct affront to us, and there are measures that we can take to make sure that you don't do those sorts of things." And I respected the fact that they said it was f- to keep order, and it was the culture, and pretty much everybody in the prison system accepts it anyway. Eventually, I sat with some of the Black guys as time went by, and we actually made a little, an elder Black guy by the name of Mr. B, he was originally from Chicago and from Detroit, he was like the most respected inmate. He got a 25 year sentence. He looked like Morgan Freeman, the actor. He was a lot like him actually, very res- mature, responsible. He was the guy a lot of the guys went to for their legal questions 'cause he knew everything, and a real nice man and a gentle man.And by the time I got there, he had already done like 20 something years. So he was close to going home, and I'd stay up late at night with him talking in that - in the, uh - in the, uh, dormitory portion of the prison where you're - you - where I was first before I got my cell. Um, but it was important to him that before he left, after 20 something years, that he could actually sit at, at the chow hall with a white guy. And he liked me 'cause I was, you know, the - from Chicago and, uh ... So we did that one day and I thought it was get- we- w- you know, it was probably - I was there probably a year and a half by the time we did that. And I sat there and everybody looked at us, you know, we're sitting there, I'm sitting with the Black table. And then this great movement for civil disobedience and civil rights petered out and no one gave a fuck. (laughs)

    18. JR

      Really?

    19. RB

      Yeah. Yeah, it didn't matter at all.

    20. JR

      Wow.

    21. RB

      Yeah.

    22. JR

      What - was it because that guy was so respected?

    23. RB

      Yeah. I think that was a lot of it.

    24. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    25. RB

      And, you know, I - you know, that s- you - not everybody likes you and some people really dislike, and there were guys in prison who really didn't like me. But for the most part, I had a lot of ... You know, I ha- you know, I had low approval ratings after I got arrested and before- and bef- as they were investigating me when I was governor, but I had pretty high approval ratings in prison (laughs) with my fellow inmates. (laughs)

  10. 55:58 – 1:21:01

    Faith in confinement: Bible reading, meaning-making, and Viktor Frankl

    1. JR

      So, um, how did you get into the Bible? 'Cause that - that was a big part of your conversation with Tucker.

    2. RB

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      You know?

    4. RB

      Well, you know, (sighs) so that- that first night, you know, when they - it's the stark reality really hit me, that first night, when around 10:00 at night I hear this big boom and then you hear the gates sh- shutting, 'cause they were now locking you in. It's all iron and it's loud. Lock. And then the lights go down, then the lights are out. Now suddenly, you're, you're swallowed up in blackness and darkness. And we're locked in, iron bars, you can't get out. And here I am with all these prisoners and inmates, you know, and, uh, I just left my family at 5:30 in the morning, I'm not going home tonight.

    5. JR

      (sighs)

    6. RB

      Or tomorrow night or next week or next month or next year, right? God willing, I win my appeal, but that might be three years. But even that, I was fearful after seeing their criminal justice system and how rigged it was. Deep down, I knew I was a dead man. I knew that from the beginning when they g- when they did what they did. I just felt like I had to fight to be free.

    7. JR

      Do you think there's anything you could've done that would've gotten you out of all of this?

    8. RB

      (smacks lips) I could've pled guilty and got less of a sentence, there's no doubt about that.

    9. JR

      But what about if you just - when they came to you, what that senator, if you said, "Sure, we'll hook that up."

    10. RB

      It ... No, no, no, I d- I don't think that was-

    11. JR

      They were still coming for you?

    12. RB

      No. And they wanted me to - they wanted me to snitch on Obama. And they arrested me at 6:00 in the morning and they - they had to sh- I read about that too. In my house, SWAT teams, 24-member SWAT team around my house. I'm the sitting governor of the fifth-largest state in America. I've got a security- security detail of my own. But if four hours later, I'm in their- while I'm in their custody, it's good cop time and they're not being nice to me. You know, "You're not a bad guy. We heard all these tapes. You're just a product of Chicago politics. We think you can help us. We'd like you to talk about, you know, Obama. We know he wanted to make a deal with you." Stuff like that, they're telling me. It was clear what they wanted to do and I- I said, "Look it, I didn't do anything wrong, and as far as I know, he didn't either. There's really nothing to talk about." And you ... And then they cha- their mood changed and they sent me to another facility and they put me in this little cell and, uh, they had me next to this angry f- guy that was all fucked up on PCP or something, he was like a raging a- or wild-

    13. JR

      Performed?

    14. RB

      ... animal to send me a message, you know? And, um, d- they- he- I think what they- they were never gonna go after Obama, but what they wanted to do was they wanted to go to him and say I was willing to cooperate against Obama and then leverage that and have Obama then that- tell them, "Look, just leave us alone. Let us get this guy. Keep us in office when you s- get sworn in on January 20th. Don't bring in new US attorneys. Don't bring Democratic US attorneys in."

    15. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    16. RB

      "Keep us Bush US attorneys here and, uh, you leave- you stay out of this and we'll leave you alone." That's what I think they did.

    17. JR

      So it's a lot of chess.

    18. RB

      Yes. Yes.

    19. JR

      There's a lot of moves-

    20. RB

      Yes.

    21. JR

      ... and countermoves and-

    22. RB

      Yes.

    23. JR

      ... people are used as pawns.

    24. RB

      Correct. Their political power centers ... Here's the danger to the American people and to our democracy. They're not supposed to be that. They're supposed to do justice. They're supposed to go after real crimes.

    25. JR

      They're supposed to represent the people.

    26. RB

      They're not supposed to be a political power center.

    27. JR

      Right.

    28. RB

      You know, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Libertarians, yes. House members, Senate members, the executive branch presidents, yes. The Supreme Court and the courts, yes. Checks and balances. The Founding Fathers had the wisdom to create a system like that 'cause they know the corruptibility of man. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, so they divided power. That's the beauty and genius of what they did in this country. They did not foresee coming out of the executive branch would be this tumor, this cancer, that really started picking up steam in the 1920s. Federal law enforcement, and that it would grow, and that the tactics and the methods they used to go after Al Capone or later on, uh, you know, Carlos Ki- Escobar and El Chapo and people like that that they would actually use against governors and presidents. They didn't foresee that. The problem is as a practical matter, because they have such power, the politicians are scared shitless of 'em. They don't wanna stand up to them 'cause they're afraid these people will trump up shit against them and just make shit up or get something they might have- may have done and made it bigger. So it's very hard-

    29. JR

      So everybody knows how the game is played, so everybody has to play the game.

    30. RB

      Correct. And then when you get ... You're the one on the wrong end of it, all your friends in politics, they run for the hills, they abandon you.

Episode duration: 2:47:59

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