I'm here to explain my position about the proceedings that are beginning on Monday, and explain some of the thinking behind the decision that I made and give you some insights on it.
Let me say, this is not an act of defiance, in fact just the opposite. But there are huge, big issues at stake with regard to the proceeding starting on Monday and specifically with regard to the rules and the process that those proceedings provide for.
Let me also say how much I would like to be there on Monday, how eager I am to go to Springfield and confront the charges that are being brought against me and how determined and eager and impatient I am to be able to call witnesses so that I can show my innocence and show that, notwithstanding mistakes and errors in judgments from time to time, most of the things that I've done as governor have been the right things and have been things that have helped people."
However, as much as I'd love to participate in the Senate trial and in the Senate process, under the current rules that the Senate provides, they're not allowing me to participate in that process. To participate in a process that denies fundamental fairness, fundamental due process, to be part of a process that doesn't allow for calling of witnesses and worse than that, doesn't allow for me or any citizen to challenge charges that are brought against me, is a fundamental violation of the Constitution, it is a trampling of the Constitution.
Specifically, I'm talking about two rules. Rule 15F, which by all intents and purposes prevents me from calling in witnesses like presidential Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, from top presidential staff of Valerie Jarrett, from Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. and a whole series of other witnesses that I would eagerly call to testify under oath to show that I've done nothing inappropriate with regard to the decision to pick a United States senator. Under rule 15F, I'm prevented from calling witnesses like that to make that case.
But even if I could call those witnesses, the more onerous rule is rule 8B. Rule 8B essentially says that the charges that the House bring in a report that was not cross examined, not challenged, not confronted, that those very charges cannot be challenged, cannot be contested, cannot be refuted. In short, you can have all the witnesses you want, it doesn't matter because that document alone is going to be accepted as fact.
That is a gross violation of every constitutional principle that exists. It's a violation of the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. It's a violation of the cornerstones of the principles that we have to protect us as individuals, to protect our civil liberties, and protect the ability to be able to answer false accusations in a fair way. If they can do this to a governor, they can do this to any citizen in Illinois.
Now, I like old movies and I like old cowboy movies, and I want to explain how these rules work in a more understandable way. There was an old saying in the Old West: There was a cowboy who was charged with stealing a horse in town and some of the other cowboys, especially the guy whose horse was stolen, were very unhappy with that guy. One of the cowboys said "Let's hang him." And the other cowboys said, "Hold on. Before we hang him, let's first give him a fair trial, then we'll hang him."
Under these rules, I'm not even getting a fair trial; they're just hanging me. And when they hang me under these rules that prevent due process, they're hanging the 12 million people of Illinois who twice have elected a governor.
Now, they may be for or against me, they may like me or not, but the people of Illinois have every right to expect that the decision they've made when they've chosen a governor, if he or she is going to be removed from office, that the process ought to at least have fundamental fairness and have all the safeguards that our Constitution guarantees to all of our citizens.
Under these rules, Rule 15F and Rule 8B, under that fact pattern I just gave you, if the cowboy who's charged with stealing a horse was charged with doing that in town, but in fact on the date and time that he apparently stole the horse in town, he was on the ranch with six other cowboys herding cattle and roping steers.
And then he expects that when his day comes to go to court he can bring those six cowboys to say it wasn't him because he wasn't in town, he was on the ranch herding cattle, even if he could bring those cowboys in to say that, under these rules, under 8B, it wouldn't matter.