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Defense presents closing arguments in Blagojevich trial

CHICAGO (AP) — Rod Blagojevich is an insecure man who talks a lot, but he is not a criminal, his defense attorney told jurors Tuesday during closing arguments at the ousted governor's corruption trial.

Sam Adam Jr. told jurors that he did not call Blagojevich to testify, as he'd promised at the beginning of the trial, because the government did not prove its case. He called the governor's silence the "elephant in the room."

"I thought he'd sit right up here," Adam said, shouting and pointing at the empty witness chair. "I promised he'd testify. We were wrong. Blame me."

"I had no idea that in two and a half months of trial that they'd prove nothing," he told jurors.

Adam, known for his theatrical style, dismissed prosecution claims that Blagojevich tried to sell or trade the nomination to Barack Obama's former Senate seat, saying, "That man wasn't selling any seat." He said jurors knew that after listening to hours of FBI wiretap tapes played by prosecutors during the trial.

"You heard the tapes and you heard Rod on the tapes," he said. "You can infer what was in Rod's mind on the tapes. You can infer from those tapes whether he's trying to extort the president of the United States. We heard tape after tape of just talking. ... If you put Joan and Melissa rivers in a room you wouldn't hear that much talk. That's how he is."

Adam, living up to his reputation, was delivering a highly emotional and thunderous closing. After saying in a whisper that the prosecution's closing was impressive, he swiftly changed his tone — shouting and pointing to different jurors.

"They want you, you and you to convict him," he yelled, moving along the jury box and gesturing.

Jurors seemed transfixed, sometimes laughing.

"It's beginning to look more like a show," Judge James B. Zagel admonished Adam at one point.

Blagojevich, 53, has pleaded not guilty to 24 counts, including trying to sell or trade an appointment to Obama's vacated Senate seat for a Cabinet post, private job or campaign cash. His brother, Nashville, Tenn. businessman Robert Blagojevich, 54, has also pleaded not guilty to taking part in that alleged scheme.