President Elect Barack Obama’s transition team released its report on contacts its staff had with Illinois Rod Blagojevich in the Senate seat for sale scandal, and while it did not show inappropriate conversations with the Governor known for his big hair-do and letter-limited vocabulary, it is unlikely to totally remove the blemish that some see as a possible scandal from the incoming administration. For now, at least…
The report shows White House incoming Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel talked with the Governor and his chief of staff, but that nothing untoward was involved in the talks. But the story remains a kind of acne on the Obama administration’s new face — and the report serves as a kind of political Proactive: it may help the acne recede right now, but a treatment of just one Obama team report isn’t going to remove a still-alive hot news story.
The Washington Post frames the issue this way:
White House Chief of Staff designate Rahm Emanuel talked twice with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and four times with the governor’s chief of staff but did not engage in any inappropriate discussions about Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat, a report by Obama’s presidential transition staff asserts.
The 5-page memorandum, which was released to reporters by e-mail two days before Christmas, says that the contact between the scandal-plagued governor and the president-elect’s staff was proper and limited in scope.
“The accounts contain no indication of inappropriate discussions with the Governor or anyone from his office about a ‘deal’ or a quid pro quo arrangement in which he would receive a personal benefit in return for any specific appointment to fill the vacancy,” the report, authored by White House Counsel-designate Gregory Craig, said.
The report also revealed for the first time that officials with the U.S. Attorney’s office investigating the Blagojevich case interviewed Obama on Dec. 18. Emanuel was interviewed on Dec. 20 and Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett was interviewed on Dec. 19.
The report did not disclose what information any of them provided to the prosecutors.
The New York Times essentially lays out the story the same way:
An internal report issued on Tuesday by lawyers for President-elect Barack Obama found that his top advisers had numerous contacts with the office of Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich and attempted to guide his choice to fill a vacant Illinois Senate seat, but none of the talks suggested an attempt to play along with the governor’s alleged attempts to sell the seat.
Rahm Emanuel, the new White House chief of staff, had two conversations with Mr. Blagojevich and four calls with John Harris, the governor’s chief of staff, about the Senate seat. He provided a list of six names of Illinois Democrats whom Mr. Obama favored to fill his Senate seat.
“At no time in the discussion of the Senate seat or of possible replacements did the president-elect hear of a suggestion that the governor expected a personal benefit in return for making this appointment to the Senate,” said the report, which was written by Gregory Craig, the new White House counsel.
In a question-answer session just after the report’s release, Mr. Craig described the contacts between Mr. Emanuel and the governor’s chief of staff as “totally appropriate and acceptable” as well as “predictable.” In his conversations with the governor in the days immediately after the election, the report said, Mr. Emanuel was pushing Valerie Jarrett for the Senate seat. Mr. Emanuel said he made the recommendation before he knew that Mr. Obama “had ruled out communicating a preference for any one candidate.”
But the story about Blag’s contacts with the Obama administration will likely go on for a while for several reasons. Here are the immediate ones:
1. The story was released right before Christmas. No matter how much Obama, his staff, spokespeople or supporters argue it, rightfully or wrongfully the release time — a week when attention to the story will be at its lowest (the week for instance where readership of all blogs including this one goes way down and people aren’t as concerned with talk radio or newscasts or newspapers) smacks of news management. That might not have impact with critics and skeptics…except for reason two:
2. The Huffington Post reports that Emanuel is now heading off to a “long-planned” family vacation — to Africa. The immediate reaction to reading this story is: What? Weren’t there any planes available to get him to the Rain Forest, North Pole, South Pole or wasn’t there room in a space shuttle? Planned or not, the timing suggests getting out of town so those pesky reports can’t ask you questions so you look inept or evasive.
The L.A. Time’s Andrew Malcolm, in a post that needs to be read in full writes, in part:
Speaking of tidy packages, the five-page report was not released in the morning as things are when public attention is desired.
It was released at 4:30 Eastern time to provide minimal exam time before the network news. But that’s probably a coincidence.
Malcolm, who is a veteran reporter writing on the Time’s lively blog, is reflecting the reaction working journalists who are paid to look at things skeptically will have to the timing of the news release. He also writes further down in his extensive post:
On Friday, Fitzgerald’s office reportedly asked Obama’s team to push the report release day back to Tuesday from Monday.
At the time we suggested politicians prefer to release not positive news when people aren’t paying attention, like John Edwards doing his TV affair confession on a summer Friday night when 14 people are watching the tube.
Oh, look, here we are 24 hours from Christmas Eve. Few are paying attention. The world has moved on. Looks like Mark Teixeira has been bought by the Yankees for $180 million.
Obama is in Hawaii working out in a Secret Service bubble, so he certainly won’t be talking. He’ll leave the political world to watch wannabe senator Caroline Kennedy pull a Sarah Palin with the media.
Emanuel, the transition team told Huffington Post today, has just a little bit ago — in fact, we just missed him — left for a long-planned family vacation in that place that every North Side Chicago family dreams of visiting for the year-end holidays, somewhere in Africa. We’re not told the area code. Likely on a safari. With no cell coverage, of course. So he’s not around to talk.
So, amazingly, there won’t be any Obama person on news video to run in endless tube loops over the slow holiday. Just the five report pages, which makes for poor TV video.
But is it just bloggers or journalists writing on the blog who are raising their eyebrows over the timing? No….the story will continue to have legs. As the embed from MSNBC’s Hardball below shows, although nothing implicates Obama or his staff reporters think it raises some intriguing questions — questions that won’t vanish just because the report is released right before Christmas:
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How people react seems to depend on a)whether they are in or have been in the news business or not (and know how news management works and won’t just pretend it doesn’t happen), b)whether they are partisans on one side or another.
Here’s the reaction from conservative blogger Allahpundit:
4:30 p.m. on December 23rd, when both he and Emanuel are literally thousands of miles away. Well played, Messiah.
There’s a lot more so read it in full (he has an update).
The Jed Report also has a post, with a different perspective, that needs to be read in full. Here’s part of it:
Let me emphasize this point: the reason why the release of the Obama report was delayed was to allow Fitzgerald to complete his interviews with the transition team. In other words, everything that Obama’s team has said has been true.
The case is (still) closed, but that probably won’t stop folks from digging. I suppose that’s fine — as long as they stop making stuff up (like the 21 conversations that Rahm never had), and quit insisting that Obama’s team prove a negative.
This story is over when the press corps says it’s over and not a minute sooner. It’s possible that they will let it go as a sort of honeymoon present, but the minute some other vague “corruption” story comes along (or they can find a way to tie in Rezko, Blago and —God willing — a prostitute or something) they’ll be right back here.
The best thing Obama has going for him is the fact that Fitzgerald does not leak. That’s a real pity for the scandal mongers — if they had a Ken Starr type, we’d be hearing all sorts of delicious little, out of context tid-bits being dribbled out at opportune moments to make Obama look bad. So they will fall back on their other method to keep these stories simmering —- endless, groundless speculation about what “could” have happened, which will, over time, color everyone’s perception until they assume that at least some of it must be true or it wouldn’t have garnered all this interest. (There’s a lot of important gossip reporters can’t talk about publicly, dontcha know.)
UPDATE: It turns out Obama himself was interviewed in the probe.
This shows that .Obama’s transition is moving quickly and giving him a jump-start on all those scandals he’s going to create
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And Dean World’s Dave Price sees a warning sign for Obama:
It’s possible (though anyone from Chicago will tell you it’s extremely unlikely) that there was no wrongdoing here, and fairly likely there’s no provable wrongdoing. Still, being this close to a criminal investigation before even taking office doesn’t bode well.
The fact he is talking to prosecutors is tactically very dangerous for Obama. Even if he’s done nothing wrong, prosecutors might find Obama’s statements perjurous, as happened to Scooter Libby, and I don’t think a President can pardon himself.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.