Actually, I believe the fraud involves the services of Blago. He has already contracted with the State of Illinois to provide services, including the efforts involved in selecting a new Senator, in exchange for the salary and benefits paid to the governor of the state. If someone else pays him to select the senator, then he has been paid twice for providing the same service.

Is it really true that the voter is able to have a reasonable expectation that a person appointed (or even elected) to a US Senate seat will be honest, minimally competent, or even compos mentis? If so, that Blago has defrauded the citizenry. But if we can’t realistically expect such an outcome, how could Blago harm anyone? He’s merely trading his incompetent candidate for someone else’s incompetent candidate.

Please pardon the cynicism, but the proof is in the pudding. Let’s see who eventually gets the post and then ask ourselves what difference it all made.

Wishing I could vote to hang ‘em all…

You are correct that Count two is a bribery count under 666. I assumed they would charge mail/wire fraud following the conspiracy. But they did not.

The “Counts” in a complaint are really meaningless, because they evaporate and cease to exist once an indictment is returned. You cannot proceed by way of complaint in federal court. It would have been enough to simply charge one count of conspiracy and nothing more.

Conspiracy has only two elements — an agreement between two or more people to commit one or more crimes with the actual intent to carry out those crimes, and an overt act in furtherance of one or more of those crimes. The crime of conspiracy is complete at that point.

Substantive mail fraud and substantive wire fraud are 1341 and 1343. Blago was charged with “Honest Services” mail/wire fraud, which uniquely applies to elected officials. They owe their “honest service” to the people who elected them, and selling the Senate seat for personal gain rather than in the best interests of the people of Illinois defrauds the people of Illinois out of that to which they were entitled by having elected Blago.

But, the Complaint also has a ton of allegations concerning pre-Senate seat stuff involving Levine, Rezko, Ata, etc.

If/when we see an indictment, I suspect it will run dozens of counts since each individual mailing and each individual wire transmission is the basis for a separate count.

You make a clever and, I suspect, slightly sarcastic point. But to avoid misleading anyone, in cases like this the persons who are being protected from fraud are the public, not the buyer or seller.

But whatever you do, don’t call in sick to work if you just want to go fishing:

From in or about 2002 to the present, in Cook County, in the Northern District of Illinois, defendants did, conspire with each other and with others to devise and participate in a scheme to defraud the State of Illinois and the people of the State of Illinois of the honest services of ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH and JOHN HARRIS, in furtherance of which the mails and interstate wire communications would be used, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1341,1343, and 1346; all in violation of Title 18 United States Code, Section 1349.

At least not in the Northern District of Illinois.