CHICAGO — Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois was arrested Tuesday on wide-ranging corruption charges that included an alleged plot to sell the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.
Obama was not accused of wrongdoing. But the scandal's eruption in the middle of the White House transition cast an unwelcome light on the often-seamy political culture of the state where he launched his career. It also drew new attention to Obama's personal ties to Antoin Rezko, a Chicago developer convicted in a kickback scheme during the presidential campaign.
In what U.S. Atty. Patrick J. Fitzgerald called a "political corruption crime spree," Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, conspired to trade the Senate appointment and other state favors for campaign money and jobs for the governor and his wife, prosecutors said.
Blagojevich, a Democrat who ran as a reformer eager to clean up corruption at the statehouse, spoke explicitly about the alleged bribes in profanity-laced conversations captured on FBI wiretaps in the governor's home and campaign office, authorities said.
Prosecutors said the charges included an attempt to extort the Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.
Blagojevich and Harris threatened to withhold state financing for the company's sale of Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, unless the Chicago Tribune fired editorial writers who had called for the governor's impeachment, prosecutors said.
Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, called the two-term governor's actions "the most staggering crime spree in office I have ever seen."
He said Blagojevich "put a 'for sale' sign on the naming of a United States senator; involved himself personally in pay-to-play schemes with the urgency of a salesman meeting his annual sales target; and corruptly used his office in an effort to trample editorial voices of criticism."
"The conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave," Fitzgerald said.
The governor was awakened at his Chicago home before dawn Tuesday by a phone call from Robert Grant, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Chicago office. Grant told Blagojevich that two agents were at his door with a warrant for his arrest. Blagojevich asked the FBI agent if he was joking, then made his way outside, where he was handcuffed and led away.
