The Brothers Blagojevich: On Trial Together But Apart

Moments after announcing he wouldn’t testify in his own defense, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich propped one foot up on a courtroom bench and began signing autographs. It lasted all of four spectators before the marshals stopped the fanfare in the courtroom on the 25th floor of the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois. Leaning back in his chair, Blagojevich’s co-defendant, his older brother Robert, looked on sternly from behind the table where he and his own lawyers sat. While the ex-governor has been the center of the legal action, the story is really one of two brothers — and, in a way, the deterioration of their relationship. Indeed, Robert Blagojevich, in an aside to TIME, referred to his “pre- and post-indictment” life with his only sibling.

“It has been a cataclysmic change,” Robert said during an exclusive interview with TIME. “We have found out who our real friends are and who aren’t. But I’m a half glass full person. The worst part of this experience was waiting for the trial. It’s a rollercoaster.” But brotherly love was already strained by then. “We were close up until the point when he asked me to come up and help him on the [Friends of Blagojevich] campaign fund,” says Robert, referring to the moment in August 2008 when, at Rod’s request, he accepted the job of heading the governor’s political money-raising program. When asked whether he’d take the position if it was offered today, Robert says, “Given what I know now? No.”

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Amid the trial, the brothers have barely acknowledged each other in the courtroom. While Rod jokes with the spectators, shaking hands and signing autographs, Robert can usually be found staring off into space, his lips pursed. Robert Blagojevich has been charged with five counts of wire fraud, extortion conspiracy, attempted extortion and bribery conspiracy; he faces 90 years and $1.25 million in fines if convicted. His brother, the ex-governor, faces racketeering, wire fraud, bribery and extortion charges which could amount to 415 years and $6 million in fines, if convicted. Among the charges: that Rod Blagojevich attempted to benefit from his right as governor to name a successor to Barack Obama’s Senate seat. The brothers have separate legal teams.

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Earlier this week, Robert spent two very tough days on the stand in what many thought would be a preview for the key moment — or performance — of the trial: the testimony of the disgraced governor. But, on Wednesday, Rod Blagojevich’s legal team said their client would not be testifying and rested their case without calling a single witness. “The government hadn’t proven its case,” they said over and over again as reporters pressed them for an explanation.

Their client was more expansive. “I’ve said from the beginning I did nothing illegal,” the ex-governor declared from the media pit on the first floor of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse. “The government played some of the tapes [of closed-door discussions with aides, wiretapped by the FBI]. In the tapes the government played, they didn’t prove anything… I did nothing illegal. In fact, they proved I sought the advice of my lawyers and my advisers,” he continued. “They proved I was on the phone talking with them, brainstorming about ideas. Yes, they proved some of the ideas were stupid. But they also proved some of the ideas were good.”

Robert Blagojevich may wish he had never decided to run Friends of Blagojevich, but he still says it is “likely” he will eventually have a good relationship with his brother again. Some observers say, however, that he has already given a great gift to his sibling by taking the stand first. Robert responded both combatively and defensively to cross-examination by U.S. Attorney Chris Niewoehner, the two men sparring back and forth. On Robert’s first day on the stand, Niewoehner grilled him about a conversation taped on Nov. 5, 2008, where Robert can be heard apparently urging his brother to “horse-trade” with then president-elect Obama to stop the federal investigation into the governor. “That’s what you wanted to have happen?” Niewoehner asks. “As a brother, of course I did!” said Robert Blagojevich, growing indignant on the witness stand.

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Experts speculate that Robert’s taking so much heat on the witness stand may be one of the reasons the ex-governor opted out of testifying. Prosecutors and defense teams are always evaluating who can best tell the story, who will best stand up under cross examination, says Daniel Purdom, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago and a partner at Hinshaw & Culbertson who runs the national White Collar Criminal Practice Group for Chicago. The fact that Robert performed well under pressure may have convinced Rod’s team that they did not have to risk their client on the stand.

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“I don’t think jurors hold it against you for not testifying,” says Purdom. “It happens all the time. In the big scheme of things, if someone like Robert, who comes across very well and has fewer areas of vulnerability, [has] testified, it may be more effective than someone who has can’t stand up under cross-examination as well.” Purdom adds that “it’s a delicate dance when there are multiple defendants, to put forth your best defense without inadvertently damaging a co-defendant.”

“I think [Robert] was fantastic, the best witness I’ve seen in five years,” said trial lawyer Terry Sullivan, a former Cook County prosecutor in Illinois, who has been observing the trial as a trial expert for WGN-TV. “I think he was credible. I think the jury liked him and I don’t think the prosecution got very far with him. I think he was a really good witness for the defense. He helped Rod a lot, a lot more than anybody expected, including the prosecution.” After his brother’s testimony, Rod posed for a few photographs outside the courthouse, then turned to the crowd and said, “I’m proud of my brother.”

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Still, Robert, a Nashville businessman, testified that he had reservations about coming to help his brother. “Rod’s brand was tarnished,” Robert said on the stand. “His standing in the polls was low.” But Robert’s wife, Julie Blagojevich, testified that she encouraged her husband to foster a relationship with his brother. “I always had it in the back of my head what my parents told us,” Robert testified. “When they were gone, all we would only have each other.”

As children, they were “tied at the hip,” and “very close,” Robert Blagojevich told TIME. “I was the older brother and I was expected to be a little more responsible,” he said. “I took that role seriously.” When they were kids, they used to play dentist, extracting pig teeth from an apple-stuffed hog after their father and his friends ate the pork brains during a Serbian orthodox saint’s feast day. Always, it seemed that Rod was trying to emulate Robert, if not literally trying to follow in his footsteps — just as Robert preceded Rod in the witness stand. During high school, Rod followed Robert to Chicago’s Lane Tech High School, but transferred to Foreman High School after not making the basketball team, because “he had not had the kind of success in sports that I did,” says Robert Blagojevich, a three-sport school athletic star.

After Robert earned a baseball scholarship and later enrolled in ROTC to pay for his remaining three years at the University of Tampa, Rod followed him to Florida. “My parents always wanted us to be together, so he came down for a couple of years then transferred out to Northwestern after I graduated,” Robert says.

Growing up, the brothers shared a bedroom, in their parents two-bedroom, five-room home on Chicago’s Northwest side. They’d tape Folgers coffee cans in the dining room and kitchen doorways, then run up and down the carpeted strip playing basketball with Styrofoam ornaments until the landlord from downstairs would start pounding for them to stop. “We did things we shouldn’t have done in retrospect,” Robert says. “We never broke the law, but we did stupid things.” Along with two other neighborhood boys, they’d unleash fire hydrants until their neighbors’ basements would flood, among several other pranks. “We were co-collaborators,” Robert says. “I’m not going to say any one of us had a better idea than the other, but we’d kind of game it and would just go do it.” Years later, federal prosecutors are trying to prove that the siblings are co-collaborators again.

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As chair of Friends of Blagojevich, the then-governor tasked his brother in August 2008 with raising $2.5 million before new legislation capped such donations on Jan. 1, 2009. Robert testified that the campaign had been rapidly losing donors after news of a potential federal investigation swirled around his brother. Part of the problem was Rod Blagojevich’s alleged association with now-jailed Chicago political fundraiser and real estate developer Antoin Rezko and former fundraiser Chris Kelly, who later committed suicide in September 2009.

“I knew he was under a lot of pressure from the issues he had in Springfield to wanting to raise money,” Robert Blagojevich said on the stand. “I knew there were issues with Tony Rezko and Chris Kelly, but his argument to me, and I was assured by people around me, [was] ‘You’re not going to do anything wrong. You don’t mix fundraising with government and policy, so you’ll be fine.” Robert Blagojevich testified that he never crossed any lines he shouldn’t have. “People were always nibbling at me, as a fundraiser, to get them something in exchange for campaign funds, and I resisted,” he said. But pressed on the intersection of politics and government, he admitted: “Sometimes they bleed over.”

Closing arguments begin on Monday.

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