Taxpayers May Fund Blago Defense

This is just the headline Rod Blagojevich needs to further endear himself to the American public. After exhausting $2.7 million from his campaign treasury to fund his first trial defense, he could now rely on taxpayers to foot his lawyers’ bill in a second trial. On Tuesday, a federal jury announced that it was deadlocked on 23 of 24 counts, leaving prosecutors promising a retrial. And, when federal defendants can’t pay for their own defense, funds appropriated by Congress come to the rescue—but Blagojevich’s advisers are claiming that tax dollars would only be a last resort. The disgraced former governor of Illinois, whose family spent roughly $400,000 on clothes in the span of seven years, will first try to pick up some extra cash on the television circuit (he was formerly once a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice). “If he can figure out a way where taxpayers at least don't have to pay for his side of this case, he's going to do that,” his publicist said.