Rod Blagojevich said Thursday that he "infinitely" trusted his ex-best friend and former chief of staff Lon Monk.
The former governor told of how the two met on a bus in London while Monk was at law school. It didn't take long, Blagojevich said during his testimony, for them to forge a "lifelong, very close friendship."
Blagojevich said he even trusted Monk enough to tell him he almost failed out of law school.
"I love Lon," he said.
Perhaps that was before Monk testified against Blagojevich in an hours-long, tooth-grinding standoff.
Before his testimony, the defense announced their cross-examination of Monk would last about an hour. Monk was on the stand for nearly five hours, with the government objecting to nearly every question Sorosky attempted to ask. Zagel sustained over 130 objections, and at one point threatened to force Sorosky to terminate the examination completely.
"This is an abuse of cross examination," a disgusted Zagel told the defense.
Indeed, after prosecutors noted that jurors were actually writing down some of the questions which had not been allowed, Zagel read an instruction to the jury, reminding them they were not to consider any courtroom banter which had been the subject of his rulings.
