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Blago's Legal EaglesThey're the guys who defended R. Kelly. Can they get the Illinois governor off the hook, too?

By Josh LevinPosted Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2008, at 1:37 PM ET

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No matter how much Genson and Adam Jr. are able to stall, it's not likely they'll win the day—after all, the state House voted 113-0 to convene an investigation. Most likely, the lawyers are using the impeachment proceedings to get an early start on the criminal trial, both in preparing their defense and in poisoning public opinion against the prosecution. In an interview on MSNBC, Genson spent a bit of a time criticizing the handling of the impeachment. (The committee has "absolutely no concept what they're doing," he argued.) Mostly, though, he belittled Patrick Fitzgerald's case. "In order to violate the law you have to do something besides talk," Genson said. "And that's all that we heard on those tapes, are snippets, thousands of hours worth of tape where people talked. But the bottom line is, nobody did anything, nobody took any money, nobody asked for any money, nobody got any advantage."

There was a lot more than talking going on in the tape at issue in the R. Kelly trial. Nevertheless, the methods that Genson and Adam Jr. used to fend off a sex tape offer some guidance on what we can expect in the Blagojevich case. First, the lawyers tried to get it thrown out. Up until the first day of the trial, they furiously filed motions to prevent the jury from seeing the tape, arguing that it would be unfairly prejudicial. When that didn't work, they tried to distract attention from the tape by attacking the credibility of everyone who touched it or testified to its authenticity: Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis, the alleged victim's aunt Stephanie "Sparkle" Edwards, and one-time Kelly paramour Lisa Van Allen. And then, of course, came the flat-out denials: the Shaggy defense (it's not R. Kelly on the tape) and the Little Man defense (someone used digital trickery to put R. Kelly on the tape).

Genson has already implemented Phase One of his tape-management plan. On Thursday, he told the impeachment committee that it shouldn't consider anything in the criminal complaint against Blagojevich because the wiretaps were "illegally obtained." (When a representative from Chicago begged to differ, Genson answered back, "Your opinion is wrong, with all due respect.") He has also launched pre-emptive strikes at those who've made statements about Blagojevich's wrongdoing, like Illinois Finance Authority head Ali Ata and Democratic fundraiser Joseph Cari. "Mr. Ata is a convicted perjurer," Genson said. "Mr. Cari is an extortionist." (Just like in the Kelly case, Genson is trying to take advantage of the fact that his client consorts with some unseemly fellows.)

On the other hand, it seems unlikely that Genson and Adam Jr. will take the Shaggy defense for another spin—it'll be hard to argue that it's not Blagojevich's voice on the thousands of hours of audio tape. The Little Man defense, too, seems like a nonstarter, as it seems preposterous (even for Adam Jr.) to suggest that Fitzgerald spliced together innocuous small talk to make it sound like the governor was up to no good. But as Jack Shafer has written, the FBI's criminal complaint doesn't appear unassailably strong. While the document's audio excerpts make it clear that Gov. Blagojevich is guilty of being a major sleazeball, there's no indication that he ever followed through on making a corrupt deal.

For now, Genson and Adam Jr. must be content with grandstanding for the press and for a state Legislature that doesn't care what they say. But when a federal grand jury returns an indictment against Blagojevich, they'll have access to the government's unexcerpted recordings and reams of other documents. Once all that material is in hand, the real lawyering will begin. My best guess at Adam Jr.'s opening statement: "Ladies and gentlemen, you all heard what the governor said—'I've got this thing and it's fucking golden, and, uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for fuckin' nothing.' The prosecution would like you to believe that he was talking about Barack Obama's Senate seat. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over the next eight weeks, we will prove to you unequivocally that he was talking about one thing and one thing only: his beautiful, beautiful hair." Case closed.