{"id":727145,"date":"2010-04-30T11:10:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-30T15:10:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2026-10-04T12:33:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T16:33:55","slug":"ex-blagojevich-aide-lon-monk-enters-new-guilty-plea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/727145","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Blagojevich aide Lon Monk enters new guilty plea"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Breaking News Center<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n One of former Gov. Rod
\nBlagojevich’s former chiefs of staff who is expected to be a key witness
\n in his corruption trial entered a new guilty plea in federal court this
\n morning.
<\/br>
<\/br>Alonzo "Lon" Monk, 51, originally pleaded guilty in
\nOctober and agreed to testify. Today, he pleaded guilty to a superceding
\n indictment that was filed in the case in February.\n<\/div>\n

The new
\nindictment was designed to head off any issues if the Supreme Court
\nstrikes down or limits the "honest services" fraud law. Monk’s plea was
\nnecessary before Blagojevich’s trial, set for June 3. <\/p>\n

Monk is expected to testify that
\n Blagojevich and three of his closest friends – including Monk – schemed
\n from the outset of his administration to enrich themselves by
\nleveraging the powers of Blagojevich’s office.
<\/br>
<\/br>Monk is expected
\nto tell the jury how the four — a group that also included key
\nfundraisers Christopher Kelly and Antoin "Tony" Rezko — planned to
\nbring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions they
\n could split up when Blagojevich left office.
<\/br><\/p>\n

Monk’s origninal
\nplea was to a single count of mail fraud in exchange for two years in
\nprison. Prosecutors dropped that count Friday and had Monk plead to one
\ncount of conspiracy to solicit a bribe.<\/p>\n

For more, please click here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Breaking News Center: One of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s former chiefs of staff who is expected to be a key witness in his corruption trial entered a new guilty plea in federal court this morning.Alonzo "Lon" Monk, 51, originally pleaded guilty in October and agreed to testify. Today, he pleaded guilty to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2515,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-727145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-33a9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2515"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":828551,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727145\/revisions\/828551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}