Mediaite Exclusive: Censored Portions of Blago Subpoena May Implicate Team Obama
More details from the subpoena:
19. President-elect Obama was also involved in other senate candidate choices. On December 8, 2008, John Harris’ secretary’s call log noted President’s Chief of Staff called at 10:47 am and wrote “needs to talk to you asap” (Harris 302, February 20, 2009). President’s Chief of Staff told the FBI that he had a conversation discussing the Senate seat with Obama on December 7, 2008 in Obama’s car. President’s Chief of Staff told the FBI “Obama expressed concern about Senate Candidate D being appointed as Senator. [President’s Chief of Staff] suggested they might need an expanded list to possibly include names of African Americans that came out of the business world. [President’s Chief of Staff] thought he suggested Senate Candidate E who was the head of the Urban League and with President’s Chief of Staff’s suggestion.” (President’s Chief of Staff, 302, 12-20-08).
These are the paragraphs that directly implicate White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in the affair. The direct conversation between Emanuel and Harris (Blagojevich’s chief-of-staff) is mostly bad for the Democrats for image reasons, but because of the continued denial of any communication between Obama and Blagojevich staff, this new bit of conversation is also not helpful.
However, the defense has a good faith belief that Mr. Rezko, President Obama’s former friend, fund-raiser, and neighbor told the FBI and the United States Attorneys a different story about President Obama. In a recent in camera proceeding, the government tendered a three paragraph letter indicating that Rezko “has stated in interviews with the government that he engaged in election law violations by personally contributing a large sum of cash to the campaign of a public official who is not Rod Blagojevich. … Further, the public official denies being aware of cash contributions to his campaign by Rezko or others and denies having conversations with Rezko related to cash contributions. … Rezko has also stated in interviews with the government that he believed he transmitted a quid pro quo offer from a lobbyist to the public official, whereby the lobbyist would hold a fundraiser for the official in exchange for favorable official action, but that the public official rejected the offer. The public official denies any such conversation. In addition, Rezko has stated to the government that he and the public official had certain conversations about gaming legislation and administration, which the public official denies having had.”
President Obama is the only one who can testify as to the veracity of Mr. Rezko’s allegations above.
Finally, the defense makes a case for Obama being pivotal to the credibility of Tony Rezko, an Illinois fundraiser who became an albatross on the Obama campaign’s back in 2008 when he was convicted of several charges of corruption. While there was ultimately very little evidence of wrongdoing involving Obama, Rezko and Obama bought property in the same neighborhood and had known each other for a long time. Rezko was a frequent donor to the Blagojevich campaign, though not particularly implicated in the Senate seat case.
It seems the defense is the guilty party for being lazy enough to highlight classified portions of the motion black and hope that no one notices, though it seems counterproductive to try to hide these bits of evidence– most of which has Blagojevich coming out smelling like a rose– so feebly. One theory is that, given how well their client looks in these clips, they wanted the evidence out there without it being their fault, so they made it easy to discover it. This makes the defense look good for not releasing classified but favorable information while having their client reap the benefits of it.
UPDATE: Upon further of the subpoena, we found the following:
Although it is the defense’s position that all tapes and sealed information be made public, to comply with the Protective Order of April 14, 2009, portions that contain sealed information provided by the government have been
redacted. The defense, however, urges this Court unseal the entire motion.
Because of the favorable nature of the redacted material, we assumed the defense would be interested in having it out there. This proves that they were. Whether the defense deliberately made the motion’s private data so easy to read, however, is still a matter of discussion.
There is a lot to sift through in the motion of subpoena, so if we missed anything or you have more information on the matter, feel free to email us the info along. We’ll be keeping tabs on the trial and Obama’s response to the subpoena as the story develops.
