Complaint Suggests Obama Might Have Caught Wind of Blagojevich Dealings

By Guest Column —— Bio and Archives December 12, 2008

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Barack Obama says he had no contact with Gov. Rod Blagojevich over his vacant Senate seat, but the sequence of events in the FBI complaint suggests he might have caught wind of the governor's alleged dealings.

Barack Obama insists that he and his staff were not involved in the alleged schemes Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich cooked up to sell off the president-elect's vacant Senate seat. But the timeline of activity outlined in the FBI's 76-page complaint against Blagojevich suggests Obama's team was aware that his home-state governor was playing political hardball in the weeks before his arrest. That's because shortly after Blagojevich allegedly told his advisers, in an expletive-laced conference call, that he would not appoint Obama's pick to the Senate absent huge favors in return, Obama's apparent pick promptly dropped out of the running for the Senate and joined the new White House staff. More...