As expected, Tony Rezko’s lawyer, Joseph Duffy, spent the day demolishing the credibility of the government’s key witness, a sleazy political fixer named Stuart Levine who allegedly conspired with Rezko to commit various acts of corruption. Levine answered Duffy’s questions in an affectless tone, describing a long list of lies that he’s told, crimes that he’s committed and public offices he’s abused for private gain. Some memorable moments:

1. Duffy asked Levine to enumerate the kinds of crimes he committed. A truncated transcript follows:

LEVINE: I did illegal drugs… I paid bribes… I committed fraud… Money laundering… Mail fraud… Attempted extortion… DUFFY: Any tax frauds? LEVINE: I do not believe I’ve committed tax frauds.

Duffy proceeded to spend the better part of the morning and early afternoon detailing the many, many tax frauds Stuart Levine has committed.

2. Duffy asked Levine to estimate the number of times he’s broken the law. Levine said he cannot. Duffy, feigning bafflement, bellowed, “You’ve committed so many crimes that you cannot tell the jury how many you’ve committed?”

3. At the beginning of the day, some of us in the media overflow room were laughing at Duffy’s theatrics and Levine’s cavalier attitude toward his own rottenness. Over the course of the day, as Duffy relentlessly interrogated Levine about the many ways he defrauded everyone around him — including several charities, his relatives’ kids, and the people of Illinois — that amusement turned into sobriety, and then into deep disgust and embarrassment for Levine. Some even felt sorry for him. I was mostly angry, and grew even more so when I saw him downstairs leaving the courthouse, giggling with his arm around a young blond (I have no idea who she was). Anyone who was fooled by Levine’s hoarseness into thinking that Duffy’s pounding left him at the end of the day feeling low, allow me to disabuse you of that notion, because I was there. He was laughing. It was the same laughter you could hear in his voice when he discussed his various frauds with his co-schemers on government wiretaps. This guy loves – loves – to steal. You can hear it in his voice.

Even though he’s facing five-and-a-half years in prison, I got the impression today that the guy still enjoys playing the role of the corrupt politician, even though the feds have him over a barrel. Any smart juror would have seen it too. As I wrote earlier today, the only thing supporting Levine’s testimony is the government’s wiretaps, which they used to record conversations that largely back up what Levine has testified to on the stand. But even those are pretty thin, and only one — the one in which Levine and co-schemer Bill Cellini discuss an extortion plot involving Rezko and Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich — really puts Rezko at the scene of the crime. The victim of the plot — a guy named Tom Rosenberg — is scheduled to testify later this month. His testimony will have to be strong if the prosecutors are to pull this thing out of the fire.

One hopes for their sake that the U.S. attorneys did not hang their entire case on a weaselly thief like Stuart Levine, with nothing but a few wiretaps to back them up. If that is what they did, please let them know if you see them that Stephen Spruiell of National Review has got some excellent subprime mortgages for sale that they should put all of their money into immediately.