By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago wants a federal judge to compel the testimony of an attorney who served as Rod Blagojevich’s general counsel while he was governor of Illinois.
At issue is the attorney-client privilege involving the attorney William J. Quinlan. Blagojevich and his brother Robert face trial on public corruption charges.
In a court filing Wednesday, the government argued that Blagojevich had waived any client-attorney privilege when he allowed government employees involved in the case to listen to secretly recorded conversations involving Quinlan and Blagojevich in the fall of 2008. The government also wants Quinlan to disclose any relevant documents.
Up until that point, tapes that might have been subject to attorney-client claims had been held at arms length from prosecutors and reviewed by a “filter team” from the U.S. Attorney’s Office that had not been involved in the case, according to the court filing.
The government also argued that case law showed that a tax-paid state attorney should not be able to claim attorney-client privilege in a criminal case.
