## Facts

- Rod Blagojevich, Illinois’s governor, was investigated using court-authorized wiretaps that captured discussions about using official powers to obtain benefits.
- After the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat became vacant, and Blagojevich had authority to appoint a replacement.
- Intercepted calls reflected Blagojevich treating the appointment as leverage to obtain advantages, including:
  - Seeking action from the President-elect’s circle tied to appointing a preferred candidate (including Valerie Jarrett).
  - Seeking a Cabinet appointment, a lucrative post-government job, or funding for an organization he would control.
  - Discussing the Senate appointment in connection with large monetary contributions, including a proposed $1.5 million “campaign contribution” tied to supporters of a potential appointee.
- The prosecution also alleged additional schemes involving fundraising and the use of governmental authority in regulatory and legislative matters.
- In the first federal trial, the jury convicted Blagojevich of making false statements to the FBI and hung on other counts.
- In a second trial, a jury convicted him on 17 additional counts, for 18 total convictions.
- The district court imposed 168 months’ imprisonment on the most serious counts (with concurrent lesser terms on others).
- Blagojevich appealed, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence, statutory scope, jury instructions (especially a “Senate seat for Cabinet position” theory), and sentencing.

## Issues

1. Whether federal corruption statutes and honest-services/wire-fraud theories criminalize a proposal to trade the appointment power for a Cabinet position or similar public office, as distinct from a trade for money or other private benefits.
2. Whether the jury instructions improperly permitted conviction based on lawful political bargaining (“logrolling”) rather than a corrupt quid pro quo for private gain.
3. Whether instructional error required vacatur of some counts and resentencing.
4. Whether the sentence was affected by the vacated counts and therefore required remand.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit affirmed most convictions, concluding the evidence supported findings of extortion, bribery solicitation, and wire fraud where Blagojevich sought money or other private benefits in exchange for official action.
- The court vacated five counts that could have rested on the theory that trading the Senate seat for a Cabinet position (or another public office) was itself criminal.
- The court held the challenged instructions did not adequately separate permissible public-for-public political bargaining from criminal exchanges for private gain, creating a risk of conviction for noncriminal conduct.
- The court vacated the sentence and remanded for possible retrial on the vacated counts and for resentencing on the remaining affirmed counts.

## Legal Principles

- Federal corruption and fraud theories require a corrupt exchange involving private gain; they do not automatically cover bargaining in which the consideration is another public act or public office.
- “Political logrolling” (exchanging official acts for political favors within government) may be ethically questionable but is not, without more, a federal crime.
- Jury instructions in public-corruption cases must clearly require the jury to find a quid pro quo for money or other personal benefit when liability depends on distinguishing political bargaining from bribery or extortion.
- When a conviction may rest on an impermissibly broad legal theory due to defective instructions, the affected counts must be vacated, and resentencing may be required if the sentencing package was influenced by those counts.

## Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit largely sustained Blagojevich’s corruption convictions where the evidence showed attempted trades of official action for money or personal financial advantage, but it vacated counts tied to instructions that could treat public-office-for-public-office bargaining as criminal, and it remanded for potential retrial on those counts and for resentencing on the affirmed convictions.


United States v. Blagojevich, 794 F.3d 729 (7th Cir. 2015)