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Portland authorities signaled on Friday that they will no longer continue to investigate charges made against former Vice President Al Gore stemming from allegations he groped a licensed massage therapist in 2006.

Local television station KOIN reports:

The complaining witness, Molly Hagerty, stated that she was sexually abused during a massage session at the Hotel Lucia when Gore was in Portland.

Hagerty failed a polygraph test during the course of the investigation, and there was no DNA evidence on the pants she claimed she wore during the alleged incident, according to investigators.

Gore has vehemently denied the charges of sexual misconduct that recently came to light when the Portland Police Bureau signaled it was opening an investigation into the case.

After news broke that the probe would be dropped, Gore spokesman Kalee Kreider said in a statement:

“Mr. Gore unequivocally and emphatically denied this accusation when he first learned of its existence three years ago. He respects and appreciates the thorough and professional work of the Portland authorities and is pleased that this matter has now been put to rest.”

The National Enquirer first broke news of controversy last month.

Multnomah County District Attorney Michael D. Schrunk issued a statement summarizing the deficiencies in the case:

1. Ms. Hagerty, who has red hair, states she called Mr. Gore immediately following the alleged incident and told him to “dream of redheaded women” seemingly in contradiction to her assertions that she was terrified of Mr. Gore. Two days after the alleged incident Ms. Hagerty also sent an email to the Hotel Lucia stating that she appreciated the business referrals she received from the hotel. She did not mention any problem with Mr. Gore;

2. Witnesses at the hotel where the alleged incident occurred state they do not remember seeing or hearing anything unusual—directly contradicting Ms. Hagerty’s published claim in the July 12, 2010 of the National Enquirer that she was “shaking and in shock” and “rushed down the hall and to the lobby where the front desk clerk noticed she was upset was asked if she was OK”;

3. Forensic testing of pants retained by Ms. Hagerty as possible evidence are negative for the presence of seminal fluid;

4. Ms. Hagerty has not provided as repeatedly requested medical records she claims are related to the case;

5. Ms. Hagerty has also failed to provide other records related to the case;

6. Ms. Hagerty failed a polygraph examination;

7. It appears Ms. Hagerty was paid by the National Enquirer for her story; and

8. Mr. Gore voluntarily met with detectives and denied all of the allegations.

More on Al Gore

Excerpt from:
Al Gore Sexual Harassment Charges DROPPED: Portland Authorities Won’t Pursue Case

FORT WORTH, Texas — Alex Rodriguez filed an objection to aspects of next week’s auction of the Texas Rangers, saying he and other former players may not get the millions owed them.

Rodriguez is due $24.9 million in deferred compensation six years after he was traded to the New York Yankees, and he tops the list of the unsecured creditors in the Rangers’ bankruptcy case.

At the auction set for Wednesday, the starting bid is from a group led by Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan and sports attorney Chuck Greenberg, who are Major League Baseball’s preferred buyers. Their $575 million bid includes paying the full $204 million owed to A-Rod and other unsecured creditors.

But under the bidding procedures, other potential buyers can decide which provisions to include in their offers.

“Out of an abundance of caution, Rodriguez files this limited objection due to potential uncertainties” about other bidders’ plans, his lawyer, Joseph Wielebinski, wrote in a motion filed Wednesday.

Rodriguez’s objection was among a dozen or so filed this week, most by creditors over monetary amounts or other issues with the Rangers’ sale and bankruptcy plan.

Previously, the unsecured creditors had not objected to the Rangers’ plan that was part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in May. The team’s plan included repaying creditors $75 million and selling the club to the Greenberg-Ryan group, whose deal had been stalled by angry creditors for months after the team announced that group as the buyer.

Lenders and the court-appointed restructuring officer repeatedly argued that the Greenberg-Ryan bid was not the highest and called for an auction, which the judge approved.

Potential bidders include Houston businessman Jim Crane and Dallas investor Jeff Beck, both involved in the previous bid process. Billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was still reviewing documents and considering whether to bid, his attorney said.

More on MLB

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Alex Rodriguez Worried About Losing Money In Texas Rangers Auction

While the official report will be released later today, word is leaking out that Governor David Paterson will not face criminal charges for his involvement in his top staffer’s domestic violence case.

Chief Judge Judith Kaye, who headed up the investigation after Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recused himself from the case, is not expected to recommend that Paterson face charges for contacting Sherr-una Booker after she accused David Johnson of brutally attacking her on Halloween.

Reports the Daily News:

…It is expected the report will knock the governor for showing poor judgment in contacting the woman who accused his top aide, David Johnson, of a brutal attack on Halloween night.

The court case was closed after the woman, Sherr-una Booker, failed to appear in court a day after Paterson contacted her by phone. Booker last week met with the Bronx Disitrict Attorney’s Office to ask that they bring criminal charges against Johnson.

Kaye will reportedly stay with the investigation “until the matters are resolved.”

Read this article:
Paterson Criminal Charges Not Expected

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma Republicans rejected anti-Washington sentiment on Tuesday, selecting a two-term congresswoman as their nominee for governor rather than a tea party-backed conservative who once called for the creation of a new state militia to protect state sovereignty.

U.S. Rep. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma City defeated state Sen. Randy Brogdon and two other candidates and would be the state’s first female governor if elected Nov. 2. Democrats chose between Attorney General Drew Edmondson and Lt. Gov. Jari Askins.

Fallin gave up her congressional seat to seek an office being vacated by Democratic Gov. Brad Henry, who cannot run for re-election because of term limits. Brogdon put up a pesky fight and accused Fallin of making a “liberal compromise” by voting in 2008 for President George W. Bush’s plan to bail out the nation’s financial industry.

With two-thirds of the state’s precincts reporting unofficial returns, Fallin had 58 percent of the vote and Brogdon had 36 percent.

Voters also decided nominees in races for U.S. Senate and Congress, state House and Senate, and eight statewide posts, including five open seats.

Fallin was unable to vote for herself after being called back to Washington for a vote on a supplemental funding bill for the war in Afghanistan. She planned to return to Oklahoma City on Tuesday night to address supporters.

“She never fought this primary with both fists out,” said University of Oklahoma political science professor Keith Gaddie. “She’s absorbed some blows from a primary opponent, but it has not endangered her nomination.”

Fallin was the state’s first woman and first Republican to serve as lieutenant governor, a post she held for 12 years before being elected to Congress from the Oklahoma City area in 2006. She previously served two terms in the state House.

Retired Department of Defense worker James Sieber, 65, said he was most concerned about the economy as he voted for Fallin in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore.

“It is the economy and the direction this economy is going and the need to change that direction,” Sieber said.

Donnie Andrews, 49, a Moore police officer, expressed a similar sentiment and also voted for Fallin.

“I was planning on retiring, but not with the economy the way it is,” he said.

Brogdon told The Associated Press in April that he backed the creation of a new state militia to address what he called an “overreaching federal government.” He retreated after a public backlash and said he was speaking only about a National Guard-style militia to aid the state during civil emergencies.

Also in the Republican race Tuesday were Oklahoma City-area businessmen Robert Hubbard and Roger Jackson.

Edmondson and Askins gave up relatively safe seats to try and keep the governor’s mansion in Democratic hands.

Edmondson is a Vietnam veteran who served four terms as attorney general. His father is a former U.S. congressman, his uncle was elected governor in 1958, and his brother is chief justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

Edmondson has raised the most money among all the candidates, amassing nearly $2.6 million in contributions through July 12, according to the most recent campaign finance reports.

Askins served as a special district judge in Stephens County, as a member of the pardon and parole board and for 12 years in the Statehouse before defeating then-House Speaker Todd Hiett for lieutenant governor in 2006. Askins enjoyed a last-minute endorsement from former University of Oklahoma football coach Barry Switzer, a state icon who backed Henry in 2002.

In the U.S. Senate primary, incumbent Republican Tom Coburn defeated primary challengers Evelyn Rogers of Tulsa and retired teacher Lewis Kelly Spring of Hugo. Coburn will face Democratic nominee Jim Rogers of Midwest City, who beat political newcomer Mark Myles. Two independents also await Coburn in the Nov. 2 general election.

Read more:
In Oklahoma Governor Primary, Voters Reject Anti-Establishment Sentiment

DENVER — The federal government is rapidly expanding a program to identify illegal immigrants using fingerprints from arrests, drawing opposition from local authorities and advocates who argue the initiative amounts to an excessive dragnet.

The program has gotten less attention than Arizona’s new immigration law, but it may end up having a bigger impact because of its potential to round up and deport so many immigrants nationwide.

The San Francisco sheriff wanted nothing to do with the program, and the City Council in Washington, D.C., blocked use of the fingerprint plan in the nation’s capital. Colorado is the latest to debate the program, called Secure Communities, and immigrant groups have begun to speak up, telling the governor in a letter last week that the initiative will make crime victims reluctant to cooperate with police “due to fear of being drawn into the immigration regime.”

Under the program, the fingerprints of everyone who is booked into jail for any crime are run against FBI criminal history records and Department of Homeland Security immigration records to determine who is in the country illegally and whether they’ve been arrested previously. Most jurisdictions are not included in the program, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been expanding the initiative.

Since 2007, 467 jurisdictions in 26 states have joined. ICE has said it plans to have it in every jail in the country by 2013. Secure Communities is currently being phased into the places where the government sees as having the greatest need for it based on population estimates of illegal immigrants and crime statistics.

Since everyone arrested would be screened, the program could easily deport more people than Arizona’s new law, said Sunita Patel, an attorney who filed a lawsuit in New York against the federal government on behalf of a group worried about the program. Patel said that because illegal immigrants could be referred to ICE at the point of arrest, even before a conviction, the program can create an incentive for profiling and create a pipeline to deport more people.

“It has the potential to revolutionize immigration enforcement,” said Patel.

Patel filed the lawsuit on behalf of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which is concerned the program could soon come to New York. The lawsuit seeks, among other things, statistical information about who has been deported as a result of the program and what they were arrested for.

Supporters of the program argue it is helping identify dangerous criminals that would otherwise go undetected. Since Oct. 27, 2008 through the end of May, almost 2.6 million people have been screened with Secure Communities. Of those, almost 35,000 were identified as illegal immigrants previously arrested or convicted for the most serious crimes, including murder and rape, ICE said Thursday. More than 205,000 who were identified as illegal immigrants had arrest records for less serious crimes.

In Ohio, Butler County Sheriff Rick Jones praised the program, which was implemented in his jurisdiction earlier this month.

“It’s really a heaven-sent for us,” Jones said. He said the program helps solve the problem police often have of not knowing whether someone they arrested has a criminal history and is in the country illegally.

“I don’t want them in my community,” Jones said. “I’ve got enough homegrown criminals here.”

Carl Rusnok, an ICE spokesman, said Secure Communities is a way for law enforcement to identify illegal immigrants after their arrest at no additional cost to local jurisdictions. Jones agreed.

“We arrest these people anyway,” he said. “All it does is help us deport people who shouldn’t be here.”

Rusnok said ICE created the program after Congress directed the agency to improve the way it identifies and deports illegal immigrants with criminal backgrounds. ICE has gotten $550 million for the program since 2008, Rusnok said.

Rusnok said the only place he knows of that has requested not to be a part of Secure Communities is San Francisco, which began the program June 8. Eileen Hirst, the chief of staff for San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey, said it happened “without our input or approval.”

Hirst said the sheriff thought Secure Communities cast too wide a net and worried that it would sweep up U.S. citizens and minor offenders, such as people who commit traffic infractions but miss their court hearings. Hirst also said the program goes against San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy that calls for authorities to only report foreign-born suspects booked for felonies.

“Now, we’re reporting every single individual who comes into our custody and gets fingerprinted,” Hirst said.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown denied Hennessey’s request to opt out. Brown said that prior to Secure Communities, illegal immigrants with criminal histories were often released before their status was discovered.

This month, Washington, D.C., police decided not to pursue the program because the City Council introduced a bill that would prohibit authorities from sharing arrest data with ICE out of concern for immigrants’ civil rights. Matthew Bromeland, special assistant to the police chief, said police wanted the program and were talking with ICE about how address concerns from immigrant advocates before the bill forced them to halt negotiations.

Colorado officials became interested in the program after an illegal immigrant from Guatemala with a long criminal record was accused of causing a car crash at a suburban Denver ice-cream shop, killing two women in a truck and a 3-year-old inside the store. Authorities say the illegal immigrant, Francis M. Hernandez, stayed off ICE’s radar because he conned police with 12 aliases and two different dates of birth.

A task-force assembled after the crash recommended Secure Communities as a solution.

Evan Dreyer, a spokesman for Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, said Ritter recognizes that other states have had issues with the program and he wants to take time to consider the concerns raised by immigrant rights groups before deciding “how or if to move forward.”

The Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition said in its letter to the governor that the Secure Communities is “inherently flawed and should not be implemented.” CIRC said one of its main concerns is that in cases of domestic violence, where both parties may be taken into custody while authorities investigate a case, victims may feel reluctant to report a crime out of fear that their illegal status will be discovered.

ICE maintains that only suspects arrested for crimes – and not the people reporting them – will be screened for their legal status.

___

Online:

Secure Communities: http://www.ice.gov/secure_communities/

View original post here:
Illegal Immigration Fingerprint Program, Secure Communities, Has Advocates Up In Arms

NEW YORK — Friends and political allies of embattled Rep. Charlie Rangel are noticeably quiet after the disclosure that the 40-year House veteran and dean of the New York congressional delegation may face serious charges from a House ethics panel.

Rangel, 80, told reporters Friday that he looked forward to a public airing of the charges next week and fully intended to fight to clear his name. But national Democrats, already nervous about the party’s prospects in the November election, had little to say publicly about Rangel’s plight.

It’s a particularly vexing situation for New York Democrats, who know Rangel well and have benefited for years from his campaign contributions and his advocacy for the state – particularly on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which he chaired before stepping down from the post last March.

To criticize Rangel would look politically expedient for these Democrats and could risk the ire of the Congressional Black Caucus and the many influential black activists in New York. But staying silent leaves them vulnerable to Republican charges that the party is not sufficiently tough on the ethical lapses of its members.

Another issue for many of New York’s top officeholders: a scheduled Aug. 11 campaign fundraiser for Rangel at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, hosted by outgoing Gov. David Paterson and chaired by most of the state’s Democratic party elite, including Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic candidate for governor, and Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican-turned-independent, was listed as a co-host as well.

Asked at a Buffalo event Friday about Rangel, Gillibrand said she still backed him and planned to attend the fundraiser.

“I support the chairman. He’s done a great deal of good for this country,” Gillibrand said, which drew a blast from Republican David Malpass, who is seeking the GOP nomination to challenge Gillibrand.

“By affirming her support for the ethically challenged congressman, Sen. Gillibrand has once again chosen insider Washington politics over the interests of New Yorkers,” Malpass said.

Few others were willing to weigh in on Rangel’s behalf.

In an e-mail message, Bloomberg spokesman Jason Post said the mayor’s position had not changed and he would reserve judgment until evidence was presented by the ethics panel. A spokesperson said Schumer was still planning to attend the Rangel fundraiser, while a Cuomo spokesman said the campaign schedule had not been mapped out far enough yet to know whether Cuomo would be able to attend.

Also at issue for some New York Democrats: contributions Rangel has made to their campaign committees, which Republicans say are tainted.

Rangel made the vast majority of his contributions in the 2008 campaign cycle, before the ethics committee concluded he had broken House rules by accepting corporate donations for travel to the Caribbean earlier this year. After that, many Democrats gave Rangel’s money to charity.

Two New York House Democrats, Dan Maffei and Michael McMahon, have said they will keep the money they’ve received from Rangel.

“I talked to him last night, and his position hasn’t changed. We’re not going to give up money that came from the past,” Maffei spokeswoman Abigail Gardner said.

McMahon’s spokeswoman, Jennifer Nelson, said McMahon had contributed the $1,000 he’d received from Rangel to the Wounded Warriors charity but that he would keep the rest.

“As Congressman McMahon has said before, he is not going to take other people’s money to replace funds already spent to satisfy those seeking political gain,” Nelson said.

For his part, Rangel has said he fully intends to run for another term. He faces four poorly funded challengers in the Sept. 14 Democratic primary, including Adam Clayton Powell IV, the son of the famed Harlem congressman Rangel first defeated in 1970.

More:
Unlike Rangel, Other Democrats Not ‘Looking Forward’ To Ethics-Charge Fight

WASHINGTON — Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Friday he’s angry about being put through a long-running criminal investigation into his role in the firings of U.S. attorneys.

“I feel angry that I had to go through this. That my family had to suffer through and what for?” Gonzales said in an interview with CNN.

The investigation by career prosecutor Nora Dannehy that began in September 2008 found the Justice Department’s actions in the firings of U.S. attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico during the Bush administration were inappropriately political, but not criminal. The investigative team also determined that the evidence did not warrant expanding the scope of the investigation beyond the removal of Iglesias.

Dannehy’s “judgment as to political correctness of a decision by the attorney general or by the president of the United States, quite frankly, is inappropriate and unwarranted,” said Gonzales.

He added the job of a prosecutor is to determine whether a crime has been committed, and there was no evidence in the removal of any of nine U.S. attorneys that any of the cases they handled were improperly influenced.

“This was about making a decision on personnel,” Gonzales said. “I made the decision based upon what I thought was best for the department and for the American people. All these investigations have now confirmed that this was not to influence improperly any ongoing investigation or to punish anyone for political reasons.”

Read the original post:
Alberto Gonzales On U.S. Attorney Firing Scandal: ‘I Feel Angry That I Had To Go Through This’

The last time I was in Colorado, it was for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and the city of Denver struck me as a pretty easy-going place, with friendly locals and cab drivers that basically deserve some sort of humanitarian award. But then someone decided to install a massive statue of the Egyptian God of the Underworld at the airport, and now the whole state has been engulfed by 2010 candidates who have declared war on each other.

Have you heard about the high heels? Well, in the race to decide the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in the Centennial State, that’s pretty much all anyone wants to talk about anymore. Former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton wears them! Former Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck doesn’t. His studied disregard for female footwear is apparently the number one reason he thinks people should vote for him. Or so he said, in a sexist joke he told on the stump. Norton countered with an attack ad of her own.

And the debate rages. No, seriously! It really does! There was a actual debate Thursday night and today, the Denver Post devotes the first eight paragraphs of a fifteen paragraph piece exclusively to the matter of shoes. (It does eventually get around to talking about Afghanistan, where I’m told we’re fighting a war.)

Elsewhere, the GOP has two candidates battling it out to determine who will be America’s Next Top Person To Run Against Former Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper To Be Governor Of Colorado. In one corner, we have former 3rd District Representative Scott McInnis. In the other, entrepreneur Dan Maes. And parachuting into the ring, we have Tom Tancredo — former Representative and real-life David Mamet character (his policy: “Always be closing (America’s border)“).

Tancredo is not happy! (But you already knew that, because we are talking about Tom Tancredo.) And he’s issued a crazy ultimatum to everyone involved:

Former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo demanded today that the two GOP gubernatorial candidates drop out of the race.

If they don’t, he said he will run for governor as an American Constitution Candidate, a move likely to split the Republican Party in November’s general election.

This isn’t making state GOP chair Dick Wadhams happy, at all.

“I honestly can’t believe he’s doing this right now,” Wadhams said. “By creating this false choice that they have to get out now or I get in, is nothing more than Tom following his own ambition.”

Wadhams position is that if Tancredo jumps into the race, it will essentially split the conservative vote and pave the way for a Hickenlooper victory. Tancredo believes that this outcome is going to happen anyway if the choices are McInnis and Maes. And so, Tancredo wants the two candidates to follow this insane plan of his — to save Colorado:

Tancredo called upon Scott McInnis and Dan Maes to commit to leaving the race Aug. 11, just hours following the results of the primary. That way a Republican vacancy committee could appoint a replacement. Tancredo said he doesn’t care if the substitute is not himself.

So, the idea is that the two competitors will commit to not running before the primary, then they actually stage the primary, and then the winner will say, “Like I promised Tom Tancredo, I will now quit the race, for some reason!” This does not seem likely to happen!

But as angry as Tancredo is at the state of the gubernatorial race, at least he’s fighting his battle with political tactics and hasn’t resorted to raining actual blows upon actual people. That may not be the case in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary.

The battle between state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff and Senator Michael Bennet has devolved into a street fight. By which I mean, an actual street fight:

Sparks flew Wednesday at a press conference held at Romanoff’s Denver headquarters and attended by members of the Bennet campaign. Romanoff Deputy Campaign Manager Berrick Abramson and Bennet Communications Director Trevor Kincaid clashed in the parking lot after Romanoff finished speaking.

Obviously, this is how I imagine it:

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More on 2010 Elections

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Rockies Gone Wild: Colorado Races Devolve Into All-Out War

CHICAGO — As Rod Blagojevich’s attorneys prepare to make their last pitch to jurors, their closing arguments may come down to this: The former Illinois governor wasn’t capable of doing anything but talk. And talk.

In the words of Blagojevich himself, he may have proposed some “stupid” ideas that were secretly recorded by the FBI, but nowhere is there any evidence he took a single “corrupt penny.”

That leaves prosecutors with the challenge of persuading the jury that, as ineffective as he might have seemed, Blagojevich wasn’t just talking. He was conspiring. And conspiracy is a crime.

None other than U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel alluded to the question Thursday when he tried to summarize the arguments that jurors will likely hear from both sides on Monday.

The tapes “really have a lot of talk that seems like blowing off steam … as opposed to doing,” the judge said at a hearing where he refused to dismiss the charges.

But if Zagel suggested that Blagojevich was “desperate” and perhaps delusional, the judge also made it clear that the defendant’s lack of success in obtaining money or a new job may not matter.

“Conspiracy is a crime that involves people talking to each other,” he said. “You can have a conspiracy entered into by fools and bumblers … and it’s still a conspiracy.”

Blagojevich attorney Lauren Kaeseberg insisted that the prosecution’s case was built on talk. “That means if I’ve researched a crime, I’ve attempted to commit that crime? If I’ve talked about a crime I’ve attempted to commit that crime?”

But the prosecution can wage a counterargument: That even if Blagojevich’s comments sounded like jokes – wondering what life would be like if he became ambassador to India, or suggesting that Barack Obama might ask him to join the White House cabinet – that talk did trigger action.

Prosecutors said Patti Blagojevich did research the salary of a private foundation as she spoke to her husband on the phone. And one of Blagojevich’s top aides did research ambassadorships.

Blagojevich’s attorneys have sought to exploit some of the more embarrassing revelations of the trial – that their client was so lazy he showed up to his office as little as two hours a week and sloughed off so much of his work that a top aide actually signed bills into law.

How, they might ask jurors, could the same man who hid in the bathroom to avoid discussing the state budget be capable of shaking down the president in exchange for appointing Obama’s choice to his old seat in the U.S Senate?

And why didn’t Blagojevich follow up on his threats to punish companies that didn’t find his wife a job by cutting them off from any more state business? Why didn’t he make good on threats to kill a Wrigley Field deal sought by the Chicago Tribune’s parent company if the paper didn’t fire writers who had blasted him on the editorial page?

“They could get some mileage out of that,” said Joel Levin, a Chicago attorney and former federal prosecutor. “Given his behavior in the past few months, they could say he’s something of an airhead and a flake who runs off at the mouth, (that) it’s meaningless babble.”

But, he said, the defense team will have trouble if they try to convince jurors that Blagojevich wasn’t serious.

“When you listen to his voice on those tapes … it’s all about money for himself, this is what he wanted and he wasn’t joking,” Levin said. “If you listen to his intonation, there is no indication of a joke.”

Albert Alschuler, a law professor at Northwestern University, said that if Blagojevich’s attorneys suggest, as Blagojevich did, that just because no money changed hands there was no crime committed, it may backfire.

“If you conspired to conduct affairs through bribery, that’s enough” to convict Blagojevich, he said. “You don’t need money to change hands for a conspiracy.”

One of the biggest questions is the potential effect of Blagojevich’s decision not to testify – even after his attorney promised jurors he would.

Sam Adam Jr. suggested to reporters that he will have to bring it up. He might say that even by taking the stand, Blagojevich would have acknowledged prosecutors had proven their case.

“Sam Adam will lie through his teeth (and say) we decided the case was so weak he didn’t have to testify,” Alschuler said. “The reason is this guy has so much to hide he couldn’t take the stand.”

The problem for prosecutors, he said, is that they are prohibited from even broaching the subject.

The only question is how jurors will reflect on that.

“The judge is going to instruct them not to infer anything, but you can’t erase that from your memory,” Levin said. Nor, he added, can jurors forget that it was Adam who promised them Blagojevich would take the witness stand.

On Friday, defense attorneys and prosecutors will meet to discuss the instructions jurors will receive before beginning deliberations.

More on Rod Blagojevich

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Closing Arguments In Blagojevich Trial Begin Monday: Was He Just Talking?

As Lance Armstrong pedals through what will likely be his final Tour de France, his attorney has been busy talking to lawyers involved in the biggest doping scandal in sports history.

Attorney Tim Herman told FanHouse on Monday that he recently traveled to Northern California where he spoke to a handful of defense lawyers who had cases linked to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) scandal.

More on Lance Armstrong

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Lance Armstrong Fraud Probe Leads To Steroids Lawyers