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Journalism of Courage
President-elect ELECT Barack Obama pledged on Thursday to disclose any interaction between his transition team and the office of besieged Governor Rod R Blagojevich of Illinois, while declaring again that he and his staff had no involvement in deal-making over an appointment to his vacated Senate seat.
Federal officials also acknowledged that a grand jury was weighing evidence in the case against Blagojevich, though the timing of any indictment was unclear. Blagojevich was arrested on Tuesday on charges of conspiracy and soliciting bribes in a case that involved, among other things, accusations that he had sought to put Obama’s seat in the Senate up for sale.
In a rare firsthand account of how Blagojevich, a two-term Democrat, went about the selection process, an Illinois state senator said in an interview that he had felt pressured to respond to the governor’s interest in him with a quid pro quo agreement and has withdrawn his name because of increasing wariness about the process.
The state senator, Kwame Raoul, who represents the South Side of Chicago, offered few details of his interaction with the governor’s office but said he received a call about a month ago confirming that he was under consideration. Soon afterward, however, Raoul said he ran head-on into another message: that the governor was looking for a candidate who offered something of tangible value to him.
Blagojevich did not respond to interview requests on Thursday and made no public statements, and his lawyer did not return telephone calls. Pressure to resign continued to build, even as he worked from his downtown Chicago office to address, a spokeswoman said, the state’s $2 billion budget gap.
At a news conference in Washington, Obama said he had asked his team to “gather the facts of any contacts” with Blagojevich’s office so he could share them “over the next few days.”
Obama added that he was appalled and disappointed by what he read in the federal wiretap transcripts contained in the sprawling criminal complaint against Blagojevich, which included profanities and other references about the president-elect.
Patrick J Fitzgerald, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, has said Obama was not implicated in the investigation.
“What I want to do,” Obama said, “is gather all the facts about any staff contacts that I might — may have — that may have taken place between the transition office and the governor’s office.
“But what I’m absolutely certain about is that our office had no involvement in any deal-making around my Senate seat. That I’m absolutely certain of.”
There are also references in the criminal complaint to an unnamed contender for the Senate seat — since known to be Valerie Jarrett, a close friend and adviser to Obama — whom Blagojevich identified as Obama’s preference for the appointment but who withdrew her name from consideration last month.
David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Obama, said on Thursday evening that Jarrett’s decision to remove her name had nothing to do with her knowing about Blagojevich’s alleged scheme. Jarrett’s withdrawal is among the many open questions in the corruption case against Blagojevich, and until now, the Obama transition team had declined to comment on it.
Axelrod, speaking during a question-and-answer session at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, said Obama wanted her to work at the White House.
