The enemy of my enemy is my friend — or to put it more precisely, the new quarry of my persecutor is as innocent as I was.
Here’s Conrad Black, the former owner of the Sun-Times, writing from his federal prison cell in Florida to identify with impeached governor Rod Blagojevich. Black was convicted in 2007 of corrupt business practices and sentenced to six and a half years in prison. Now the same U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago that prosecuted Black is after our governor, and Black calls U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald “Chicago’s very own Torquemada.”
Black and Blagojevich have more in common than a nemesis. The governor’s lawyer, Edward Genson, “was one of my counsel when the Fitzgerald tyranny assaulted me three years ago,” says Black, who seems to wish he hadn’t been. Black writes:
“He generally travels on a three-wheeled electric-motorized vehicle because of a long-standing muscular affliction, and drives through crowds of the press on his tricycle, threatening to bash journalistic crania with his silver-handled cane. When overwrought, which is not infrequently, he drives his little conveyance around in tight circles, wagging his chubby index finger like a parody of Hitler, and erupting verbally in wildly unpredictable allegations and images. It is impressive in a way, and at the least, entertaining. His courtroom performance is almost a vaudeville act. He is the archetypal small-office criminal lawyer, in a pre-First World War building, rarely having ever represented an innocent, or even a respectable client.”
What message could a man like that send a jury about a very different sort of client — a sitting governor; or a distinguished publisher with a seat in the House of Lords!