THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

CHICAGO (AP) — Jurors will go off to deliberate the fate of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich with the image of an immaculately dressed and smiling man with his two daughters sitting nearby in the courtroom, but also with the memory of him cursing in the vilest of terms about everyone from the president to the voters who elected him.

The ousted Illinois governor’s corruption trial will be placed in the hands of the jury Wednesday, much sooner than expected and without hearing from some of the witnesses they were told would take the stand — including Blagojevich.

After final jury instructions, jurors will be tasked with deciding the fate of the state’s second governor in a row to be charged with corruption in office. They will have to weigh seven weeks of testimony, which ranged from a hospital administrator saying he believed Blagojevich was threatening to withhold state money unless he ponied up a campaign contribution to a former deputy governor recounting how Blagojevich hid in the bathroom.

They will have to decide whether Blagojevich was engaged in various schemes to gain power and money or if he was an honest man who trusted the wrong people and innocently said the wrong things while the FBI listened in.

“This guy had more training in criminal background than the average lawyer and somehow this guy is the accidentally corrupt governor?” asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Reid Schar.

Not corrupt at all, said Sam Adam Jr., one of Blagojevich’s defense attorneys.

“He’s got absolutely horrible judgment on people,” Adam said. “And that’s this case and they want you to find him guilty of these horrible things because of that.”

The two portraits of the disgraced former governor took center stage during closing arguments Tuesday with about the only thing the attorneys agreed on was that they both told the jurors to listen to the tape recordings.

“You heard the tapes, and you heard Rod on the tapes,” said Adam, who described his client as naive but not a criminal. “You can infer what was in Rod’s mind on the tapes. You can infer from those tapes whether he’s trying to extort the president of the United States. We heard tape after tape of just talking.”

But Schar told the jury to listen to both what the governor said and what he didn’t say. Blagojevich, he insisted, knew how to ask for a bribe in a way that the person on the other end of the phone understood exactly without him coming out and asking for it.

“He knows how to communicate, that is what he does for a living,” Schar said. “He’s good at it.”

Adam — pacing, sweating and alternately shouting and whispering to the jury — acknowledged to jurors that he did not call Blagojevich to testify, as he had promised when the trial started. But, he said, the reason was simple: the government did not prove its case.

“I thought he’d sit right up here,” Adam shouted, walking over to the witness stand and pointing at the empty chair. “I promised he’d testify. We were wrong. Blame me.”

Adam had wanted to name potential witnesses that prosecutors didn’t call to testify, even threatening Monday to risk jail by doing it after Judge James B. Zagel forbid it. Zagel said Tuesday that he didn’t want Adam to refer to evidence that potential witnesses allegedly would have offered.

Adam didn’t seem to cross lines in referring to President Barack Obama, presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel — though he did seem to skirt it at least once. Zagel said he would deal with any improper references by Adam in his jury instructions Wednesday.

The prosecution objected more than 20 times to Adam’s statements, all of which Zagel sustained.

Blagojevich, 53, has pleaded not guilty to 24 counts, including trying to sell or trade an appointment to Obama’s vacated Senate seat for a Cabinet post, private job or campaign cash. His brother, Nashville, Tenn., businessman Robert Blagojevich, 54, has also pleaded not guilty to taking part in that alleged scheme.

Adam said prosecutors never presented evidence that anyone who was allegedly targeted by Blagojevich for a shakedown conducted fundraising.

“Tell me one state contract tied to fundraising?” he asked. “Did they bring one state contract based on fundraising? Just one? No.”

Schar did not raise his voice throughout his argument but did, as he wound down, display emotion for the first time. The prosecutor paused, rubbed his face and looked at the floor before he raised his head and gave what were the final words the jury would hear from attorneys.

“I don’t know how you begin to put a price on the damage defendant Blagojevich has caused,” he said. “The time for accountability for the defendants is now.”

The motion says the broke ex-governor, whose legal bills are supposed to be paid by the government, wants to forego a retrial on grounds that none of his lawyers have been paid for months of pretrial preparations.

“Should this motion be granted . . . funds for the second trial would no longer be necessary,” the motions says. An added bonus, it continues, would be “no further cost to taxpayers.”

Blagojevich, 54, faces a maximum five-year prison term for the lying count. It was widely expected that a sentencing date for that conviction would only be set after the retrial was over.

At that trial do-over, currently scheduled to start on April 20, Blagojevich faces 20 charges, including that he sought to sell or trade an appointment to President Barack Obama’s vacated U.S. Senate seat in exchange for a top job or campaign cash.

Many of the outstanding charges that would be the focus of a second trial, including fraud and attempted extortion, carry a far stiffer maximum sentence — 20 years in prison.

Messages left at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago early Wednesday were not immediately returned.

Just minutes after jurors at the first trial declared they had hung on all but one count, prosecutors vowed to try the case again. Since then, they have given no hint that they would settle with the one conviction.

Wednesday’s motion claims defense attorneys have gone almost nine months without pay and that the dearth of available funds undermines their ability to conduct investigations or seek expert opinions. As a result, it says the defense won’t be fully prepared to go to trial on April 20.

“The financial hardship . . . has created a vast inequity,” the motion says. “The government continues to have every resource at its disposal. Yet, the defense is stymied in its ability to prepare for trial.”

A nearly $3 million fund that Blagojevich drew on at his first trial to pay his team of around a dozen attorneys ran dry as the initial trial finished. Months later, presiding Judge James Zagel ruled that Blagojevich would only be allowed to retain two lawyers and a paralegal on the taxpayer’s dime.

This is Part 2 the extended interview.

But it was apparent that the Obama crew had always maintained a healthy distance from the embarrassing and hilarious Blago, and despite his attorneys’ attempts to compel testimony from Valerie Jarrett and Rahm Emanuel, nothing at all remotely damaging to the White House actually happened. And then the trial ended with deadlock on 23 counts and a conviction on one minor count. Which means: retrial. Which means: Fire up the “White House to be tainted by scandal” stories again!

The Washington Post tries its hand at the game this morning. A retrial “means a headache for the White House.” And, you know, even if nothing bad actually happens, you can still spin it as a net negative for the White House by calling it a “distraction”:

It might be no more likely that Jarrett and Emanuel would actually testify in court, but just the prospect will generate headlines again — headlines that would not aid the president’s goal of keeping his administration focused on the economy.

When political analysts worry that something may become a distraction for the White House, what they mean is that they plan on writing, at length, about the distraction, instead of what they claim is the more important thing — the economy, in this instance.

Then we just get into hilarious speculation. How else could this be bad for Obama? What if … Blago moves to Ohio and runs for Congress! Or something!

Perhaps only one thing about Blagojevich could cause the White House more grief than another trial — another run for political office.

When Blagojevich was impeached from office, the state legislature that ousted him specifically barred him from holding any state office again. But nothing blocks the former governor and congressman from moving to another state to run. Or from holding federal office in Illinois — something lawmakers in Springfield have no power to prevent.

Oh hey, lemme try: What if Blago challenges Obama in 2012? And then the convention splits and Blago ends up as Obama’s running mate? That would be quite a headache indeed! I mean, it’s unlikely, but a political reporter can dream …