00:00:40.640Special shout out to my friend Roger Stone, who I know is a very dear friend to so many of you in the Native American community.
00:00:48.260Roger is, as I've said before, one of the brightest minds in American politics.
00:00:52.960I'm genuinely curious, and I don't want bulls**t about what's going on in the American electorate, about what issues are hot, what issues are cold, the things that really motivate people to vote.
00:01:02.800Roger is like the first person I would pick up the phone and call.
00:01:06.380Very kind words from the Vice President of the United States, who now is leading in all of the polls as the first choice for 2028.
00:01:14.680Of course, I think Republicans should focus on 2026 before they start worrying about 2028.
00:01:20.180I'm old enough to having worked for President Ronald Reagan at the end of two years, 1982.
00:01:27.720Some of the establishment media, some of the liberal commentators were prepared to declare his presidency over.
00:01:36.340But the truth is, by 1984, his early tax cuts and his other regulatory reforms provided for a roaring, strong economy, and he was easily reelected.
00:01:47.180So those who are counting Donald Trump out or doing so prematurely has always benefited throughout his time in politics of being underestimated.
00:01:58.060Speaking, though, of being overestimated, this is almost too good to be true.
00:02:03.940Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, says he is pondering a third presidential bid in 2028.
00:02:12.240Hey, I said, well, Chris Christie needs to run, not for president.
00:03:47.060Todd Christie was among those charged.
00:03:49.940Regulators alleged that between 1999 and 2003,
00:03:54.620Todd Christie participated in more than 1,600 improper trades
00:03:58.760involving major corporations including IBM, AOL, Time Warner, AIG, and so on.
00:04:07.400According to the SEC, these maneuvers produced nearly $1.59 million in profit for the firm
00:04:14.380while investors absorbed about $1.5 million in additional costs or losses.
00:04:19.820Now, one might reasonably assume that these allegations would attract the attention of criminal prosecutors.
00:04:25.940Indeed, 15 of the 20 traitors in the firm were indicted on criminal fraud charges by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York.
00:04:35.280Those charges carried potential prison sentences of up to 10 years.
00:04:40.360But strangely, Todd Christie was not among those charged.
00:04:44.840Instead, Todd Christie faced only civil enforcement.
00:04:48.480In 2008, he settled the SEC case without admitting wrongdoing, agreeing to disgorge the profits and pay penalties while acknowledging hundreds of improper trades.
00:05:00.280In other words, criminal charges were never materialized in his case.
00:05:03.880Now, the official explanation offered by prosecutors was simple.
00:05:07.240The evidence, they said, supported civil enforcement but not criminal prosecution.
00:05:12.640That decision was made by the office of the U.S. attorney, David Kelly, in the Southern District of New York.
00:05:19.400Chris Christie was serving at that time as the U.S. attorney for the neighboring district of New Jersey,
00:05:26.280and of course had no formal jurisdiction himself over the case.
00:05:29.800At least that's the official explanation.
00:05:32.520Yet politics, like comedy, depends heavily on timing.
00:05:36.520Two years later, Todd Christie escaped criminal prosecution.
00:05:41.060Chris Christie's office then awarded David Kelly, leaving the government service for private practice,
00:05:48.860a lucrative corporate monitorship connected to a deferred prosecution agreement involving a company called Biomet Orthopedics.
00:05:58.380The assignment required Kelly to oversee corporate compliance reforms following allegations that the company had paid kickbacks to doctors for using its hip and the implants.
00:06:09.140Now, monitorships of this sort are not like modest consulting gigs.
00:06:15.160They actually generate millions of dollars in legal fees.
00:06:18.840The exact value of Kelly's appointment by Chris Christie was never publicly disclosed,
00:06:23.540but such arrangements frequently produce enormous revenue streams for the law firms involved.
00:06:29.540Chris Christie's defenders insist, of course, that his selection of Kelly was based solely on merit.
00:06:35.220They noted that monitors were paid by the companies involved rather than the taxpayers.
00:06:40.640They also observed that the practice of appointing outside monitors was common in federal prosecution agreements during that period.
00:08:05.000David Sampson, a close political ally, to another monitorship role.
00:08:08.840One might ask whether New Jersey's celebrated corruption fighter had
00:08:12.460inadvertently created a rather comfortable patronage system for well-connected
00:08:16.880heavyweights. Yet the Chris Christie story does not end
00:08:20.660there. Chris Christie's tenure as governor eventually became
00:08:24.240were both shattered by the infamous Bridgegate scandal, you remember that, in which traffic lanes
00:08:30.040on the George Washington Bridge were closed in apparent retaliation against a mayor who declined
00:08:35.520to endorse Christie's re-election campaign. So although the Supreme Court later overturned the
00:08:41.060criminal convictions of two Christie associates involved in that scheme, the episode left behind
00:08:46.940a lingering question about the culture that had developed in the New Jersey governor's office.
00:08:51.820When the political staff believes it's acceptable to weaponize the busiest bridge in America as a tool of petty political vengeance, what does that say about the broader environment in which such a decision is made?
00:09:05.560The Christie brothers represent a fascinating case study in modern political power.
00:09:10.180One brother accumulates $60 million in a Wall Street windfall, becomes entangled in a trading scandal that somehow avoids critical criminal prosecution.
00:09:20.020The other brother ascends through the federal prosecutor system, appoints lucrative monitorships to well-connected allies, ultimately is elected governor.
00:09:29.300And then, of course, Chris Christie turned with a vengeance against Donald Trump, fired as the first head of the presidential transition in Donald Trump's first term.
00:09:39.400He's now pitched his tent as a critic of Donald Trump.
00:09:44.680He has zero chance of being nominated in the Trump-dominated Republican Party of Donald Trump.
00:09:51.880First of all, I'm not sure where he would raise the money.
00:09:54.460You see, when you're the governor of a state, you have enormous leverage for fundraising.
00:09:59.160You essentially extort money from those who do business with the state.
00:10:02.440But he's long since left the governorship,
00:10:04.980and he is right now in the polls rated as one of the most unpopular former governors of New Jersey.
00:10:12.320And that includes a list of several governors who have either been disgraced or gone to prison.
00:10:18.940So it is interesting to watch this kind of self-adulation.
00:10:25.720But Chris Christie is not a viable candidate for president.
00:10:30.520Again, as I said earlier, Republicans would be wise to focus on 2026 before they worry about 2028.
00:10:39.920But we have not one, we have two frontrunners, J.D. Vance, who leads in most of the public preference polls.
00:10:48.620I'm a Republican, to be honest with you.
00:10:50.100Republicans, we don't dump sitting vice presidents.
00:10:55.060After four years, or two terms, eight years as vice president, Richard Nixon followed Dwight Eisenhower.
00:11:02.200After four years under Ronald Reagan, George Bush followed the great Ronald Reagan.
00:11:07.520And the chances are overwhelming that J.D. Vance, who I noticed yesterday was being attacked by Steve Bannon, another good sign for J.D., is very likely to be the Republican nominee.
00:11:20.600By the way, on my vacation this summer to Monaco was really great.
00:15:07.880I mean, banned for life on Facebook, banned for life on Instagram,
00:15:12.120banned at that time on Twitter, now known as X.
00:15:15.060I give great credit to Elon Musk, who I think has done more for the First Amendment than anyone other than the founding fathers.
00:15:23.020Now, there's a true violation of free speech rights, but you didn't see CNN or MSNBC or Politico complaining about that.
00:15:35.340And Chris Murphy over in Connecticut basically said the loud part out loud in a podcast I watched yesterday.
00:15:43.040He's once again calling for Internet censorship and for regulating the Internet so that, as he puts it, something like Donald Trump never happens again.
00:16:15.620They said that I was a go-between for WikiLeaks.
00:16:18.580Not even federal prosecutors who charged me in a bogus case to pressure me to testify against Donald Trump alleged that and produced no such evidence of it.
00:16:28.180It's going to go to the Supreme Court now because they're suing, which I'm glad to see, because all the precedents, the legal precedents that I have seen indicates that they have no right to be in the White House.
00:16:40.380The Stone Zone, entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
00:16:47.440Thanks for joining us again back in the Stone Zone.
00:16:51.900Rod Blagojevich has lived an interesting life, to say the least.
00:16:56.620He, of course, was the governor of Illinois, the first Democrat elected to that office in 26 years.
00:17:02.320He was also the first Illinois governor to be impeached.
00:17:05.220Later, he was known as federal prisoner number 40892-424 after being convicted of public corruption charges having to do with the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama when he became president.
00:17:21.160But there's a great deal more to that story, which we'll come back to in a moment.
00:17:25.900Born to a blue-collar family in Chicago, Rod shined shoes, delivered pizzas,
00:17:31.120worked in a meatpacking plant when he was growing up.
00:17:33.800He also worked for two summers on the Alaskan Pipeline.
00:17:37.060Thanks to the sacrifice of his parents and his continued hard work,
00:17:41.560he attended and graduated from Northwestern University,
00:17:44.820went on to get a law degree from Pepperdine University.
00:17:47.080He was an assistant state's attorney for Cook County.
00:19:29.320He would later have a full and unconditional presidential pardon.
00:19:33.740It was only after that he was commuted that he and I became friends.
00:19:42.480What's amazing about Rod Begojevich is after serving eight years, pretty hard time, he's not bitter, he's not broken, he's sustained by his faith.
00:19:52.520If anything, he is stronger, and he continues to speak out for the good of the country.
00:19:58.160Rob Begojevich, welcome to the Stone Zone.
00:20:01.380Thanks for having me, Roger, and thank you for those kind words.
00:20:04.960This is a historic time, and these revelations from the Justice Department last week
00:20:10.540kind of prove what you've been saying without the FBI 302s of Barack Obama
00:20:52.380I was on the verge of potentially making a political deal for the Senate seat
00:20:56.840In exchange for appointing the Attorney General of Illinois, Lisa Madigan, who I did not like, because her father was my political nemesis of the two of them, leading Democrats, who were obstructing my efforts as governor to do things for the people, in spite of that, I was willing to hold my nose and make her senator on one condition if her father, the powerful House Speaker who had been there for 43 years, Chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois, would pass legislation that would further expand health care to working families, affordable health care,
00:21:24.580invest in infrastructure highways schools hospitals create tens of thousands of jobs
00:21:31.860and had put in writing a memorandum of understanding not to raise the income tax
00:21:36.500on the people of illinois because i was fearful of that because for six years when i was governor
00:21:40.440all the leading democrats kept pushing for that income tax increase and i was fearful they could
00:21:45.240override my veto so i wanted that deal i'd hold my nose and i would make her lisa madigan the
00:21:50.760senator the night before, the day before the arrest, I instructed my chief of staff to reach
00:21:55.520out to Rahm Emanuel. They'd been talking about this deal and ask him to begin the process to
00:22:01.220see if we can make it happen. The FBI was listening and the next morning at six o'clock
00:22:06.700with 24 members of a SWAT team, very much like what they did to you, Roger.
00:22:11.600They came to my house to arrest me. They didn't want the day to start and the business day to
00:22:16.060start because they were afraid that that deal was going to happen. It was legal and good for
00:22:20.380the people of Illinois, and if they did that, they could never lie and say they were stopping
00:22:24.560a crime spree before it happened, because that's what the U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said
00:22:28.900when I was locked up in a jail cell. Now, I write about this in detail in my book,
00:22:33.400Frame, Deft, and Freed, which is coming out November 10th. A lot more detail there. But
00:22:37.680the bottom line, Roger, was this was the biggest frame-up in American history. They hijacked a
00:22:41.380twice-elected governor. They were emboldened by what they did to me. They got away with it,
00:22:45.660two trials and a judge that was pretty much their guy. It was very much their guy. And they were
00:22:50.900emboldened to go after people like you, Roger, because they were determined to go after President
00:22:54.040Trump. And this kind of weaponization, I think, really began with me at the AAA level to a
00:22:58.900Democrat governor. And then he took it to the major league level to go after President Trump
00:23:02.640and you and others who we all know what happened there. And this is a very dangerous thing for our
00:23:08.500country. This is the greatest country in the world. And it's the last best hope on earth.
00:23:11.880That's what Lincoln said. He's right. And if we lose the rule of law, we lose our democracy.
00:23:17.180Correct me if I'm wrong. You were the first governor in the country to endorse Barack Obama for president.
00:23:22.160Isn't that correct? Right. And look, for that, maybe I deserve going to prison, but you are correct.
00:23:29.120I endorsed him back in 2007. He was from Illinois. I have known Obama since 1995.
00:23:34.080We had a friendly relationship, a pretty good relationship, actually.
00:23:38.240He was from the south side of town. I was from the north side of town.
00:23:40.820He was a Sox fan. I was a Cubs fan. And we came up together and we both were, you know, had success statewide.
00:23:48.020And he then skyrocketed. He gave that speech in Boston in 2004.
00:23:52.900And then he announced for president he was running against Hillary Clinton.
00:23:55.880So in some respects, Roger, that wasn't a hard decision for me as a Democratic governor to choose between the two of them.
00:24:02.520But looking back, of course, I regret that very much. And, you know, Obama made a deal.
00:24:06.580I write I write about this in my book as well. I write that, you know, when they arrested me on the 8th of December, 9th of December, 2008, on a Tuesday, nine days later, they interviewed Obama and those documents that you talked about.
00:24:18.960And thank you very much for all the help you've given me, Roger. Those documents are Obama's FBI interview, which they would not allow me to have to defend myself at trial.
00:24:27.980And they've covered him up for 17 years, and finally, because the Trump administration is interested in transparency and letting the truth come out, they finally came out, and they are corroborating everything I've been saying for all those years.
00:24:40.640The next step is they've got to release now the 98 percent of the FBI tapes they've covered up, particularly the tape from the night before, the day before, when I made a substantial step to start the process of picking a senator, because that'll prove that they lied, and I've been telling the truth, that they arrested me to stop that.
00:24:57.980not to stop their fake crime spree that they claimed they were stopping.
00:25:01.960I give Attorney General Todd Blanche enormous credit for releasing these documents,
00:25:07.440which have been controversial for some time.
00:25:10.800The record seems to show that initially Barack Obama wanted Valerie Jarrett to fill his Senate seat,
00:25:17.540then changed his mind, decided that she should go to the White House.
00:25:21.840But this is the earliest example of weaponization.
00:25:25.540I mean, Franklin Roosevelt used the IRS, frankly, to harass his political enemies.
00:33:48.560I mean, the Democratic Party I was in, the Democratic Party that I believed in doesn't exist anymore.
00:33:55.720You know, one of the best things about the Democratic Party when I was in it was we were not that unlike sort of the in some respects, like the new Republican Party that President Trump has built.
00:34:05.540And that is, you know, fundamentally made up of working people who loved our country, who believed in God, who supported the police, who thought, you know, America was a place where if you work real hard, you can improve your lot in life, build a better life for your family.
00:34:38.200The socialists have hijacked the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party is really a socialist party.
00:34:44.180Even the so-called moderate Democrats or those who used to be moderate or reasonable Democrats are so afraid of the socialists that they – well, if they win elections, they'll govern as socialists.
00:34:57.060Our governor, J.B. Pritzker, inherited $3 billion, the Hyatt Hotel fortune.
00:35:01.820And what he does is spend all his time as governor not looking out for the interest of American citizens in Illinois and the hardworking people of this state or even the black community that's facing every year, you know, high crime rates and murder rates.
00:35:14.440He panders to illegal immigrants because that's the stuff that pleases the socialists.0.53
00:35:19.340We have a, well, we have a netball baby billionaire Bolshevik governor in Illinois0.65
00:35:25.940who's raised taxes on people and eased more than 51 times.0.75
00:35:30.480More than 1,000 businesses have left our state.
00:35:33.660Over 400,000 people have left our state,1.00
00:35:36.400and they're being replaced by, you know, illegal immigrants
00:35:39.200who have found sanctuary in Illinois and in Chicago because it's a sanctuary city and a sanctuary state.
00:35:44.800All right, Rod, I'm afraid we have to wrap it there.
00:35:46.740I want to thank my guest, Rod Begojevich.
00:35:48.540thanks for listening to the stone zone with roger stone you can hear the stone zone with
00:35:54.480roger stone weeknights at 8 on 77 wabc if you like the podcast share it with your friends
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00:36:16.960See you next time for a new episode so you never have to wonder.