Tamara Holder Doesn't Fall for the I-Man's Trap...Sorta

Note to Tamara Holder: do not complain about the early hour at which you arose to appear as a guest with Imus. He is in New Mexico, and he got up earlier than you did. Also, he has cancer and he can’t breathe.
 
“I need my beauty sleep!” Holder said. “Didn’t you hear I was on a list? I have to make sure I don’t have wrinkles!”
 
Having been featured in the Washington Times’s 30 Hottest Political Women of 2011, Holder was feeling pretty darn good about herself today. She placed 7th in the Democrats and Liberals section, just behind Tina Fey.
 
“Tamara, you’re number one on our list,” Imus said, sweetly, then asked the Chicago-based attorney about former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted earlier this week of, among other things, trying to trade or sell Barack Obama’s old Senate seat.
 
“He’s the biggest idiot,” Holder said. “I sat there and listened to his testimony. He wanted to convince everyone he wasn’t guilty, and instead he just dug his own grave.”
 
Blagojevich testified, by her estimate, for around seven hours. “It was really embarrassing,” she said, and predicted he’d be sentenced to around 15 years in prison for the 17 counts of corruption. His chances of winning an appeal are low, in her view.
 
Holder never understood the appeal of Blagojevich in the first place. “He’s kind of an imposter,” she said, and recalled meeting him a few years ago, when he was Governor. “He came into his office, and he was wearing that jogging suit he wears all the time. So here I am in a fancy suit, and he rolls in with a sweatband around his forehead.”
 
Even more captivating than the tale of Blagojevich, and far more tragic, is the trial of Casey Anthony, who is being charged with the pre-meditated murder of her two-year old daughter. Many legal observers already have Anthony convicted, but Holder was unwilling to go that far.
 
“There is no real smoking gun in this case,” she said. “It’s the prosecution using all of this circumstantial evidence, and I don’t know if it’s going to be enough.”
 
Beyond being sad, the trial is also flat out strange. “The weirdest thing about this case is Casey’s family,” Holder said. “They’re so dysfunctional.”
 
Yet as Imus noted, every family is rife with dysfunction, even (or especially?) the one at Fox News. Hoping to fan that flame, Imus wondered if Fox Legal Analysts Lis Wiehl and Kimberly Guilfoyle were “idiots” for presuming Casey Anthony would be found guilty before the defense had presented its case.
 
“I think you’re trying to dig a hole for me,” Holder said, then basically agreed that it would be idiotic to predict anything in a case as strange as this one.
 
The defense will rest today, but Anthony’s trial will continue as the prosecution prepares its rebuttal. Holder believes all the back and forth over scientific evidence will confuse the jury, particularly since there is no concrete proof of Anthony’s guilt, like fingerprints or blood splatters.
 
“I don’t know,” Holder said. “I think there’s a chance she may walk.”
 
-Julie Kanfer