Former Illinois governor Rod “Blago” Blagojevich was found guilty of 17 out of 20 counts on charges that basically boil down to him trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008.
Like all court cases, it’s a lot more complicated than that, so you may want to read the details, from, say the Wall Street Journal, or perhaps the Chicago Tribune, or maybe even the Daily Herald.
According to the jurors, it was made plain that Democrat Blagojevich tried to throw his weight around for favors. In an earlier trial he’d escaped conviction on 23 of 24 counts, most of which had to do with lying to federal investigators.
Rod Blagojevich is the second Illinois governor to be convicted in the last five (and some) years. Republican George Ryan was found guilty in 2006 on federal corruption charges, in a case even uglier than Blago’s. Ryan is currently in prison. Blagojevich faces more than one lifetime in prison.
That’s bi-partisanship.