Blagojevich on "F-ing Golden" Comment: "I Was Stupid."

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jun 2, 2011 2:00PM

Rod Blagojevich showed less polish yesterday as his testimony in his retrial continued. Former Governor Sound Bite tripped over his words a bit when asked to clarify the now infamous "I have this thing and it's fucking golden" statement, referring to the Senate seat vacated when Barack Obama was elected President. Blagojevich admitted under oath that the comment referred to the seat, that he was "stupid" for saying it, but that he was also thinking about the people of Illinois the entire time and admitted he didn't want to be left behind while other politicians, like Obama, were moving on to bigger things. From Chicago News Cooperative:

“I’m afraid to answer this. I’d like to answer this but I’m not quite sure how to answer it,” Blagojevich said during his fourth day on the stand in his federal corruption retrial. “In my mind, I didn’t know. I had no idea other than all these different ideas that we were throwing around and that I was trying to figure out what if anything could possibly be part of a deal for the senate seat. I didn’t know.”

You can almost feel the practiced humility and pauses in Blagojevich's words.

Blago received yet another admonishment from Judge James Zagel, this time taking him to task for implying that prosecutors edited transcripts from the wiretaps to bolster their case against him.

Blagojevich as consistently referred to asterisks in the transcripts while on the stand and Zagel told him in no uncertain terms that he must stop doing so in front of the jury.