The right is salivating today over a Chicago Sun-Times report from yesterday that Rahm Emanuel didn’t feel like taking questions at his kids’ performance … which doesn’t seem that odd to me. The report also suggests that Emanuel may be the person identified in the criminal complaint as “President-elect Advisor,” (hereafter PeA) which suggest Obama’s advisors did have contact with Rod Blagojevich.
It’s just not clear that means anything … it would make complete sense for Blagojevich to be in contact with Obama’s camp over this, and even more sense for Emanuel to have been the contact given that a special election for Emanuel’s house seat in the fifth district is incoming. This is the description of the exchange between Blagojevich and his Chief of Staff John Harris that refers to ‘President-Elect Advisor’:
On November 13, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH talked with JOHN HARRIS. ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he wanted to be able to call “[President-elect Advisor]” and tell President-elect Advisor that “this has nothing to do with anything else we’re working on but the Governor wants to put together a 501(c)(4)” and “can you guys help him. . . raise 10, 15 million.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he wanted “[President-elect Advisor] to get the word today,” and that when “he asks me for the Fifth CD thing I want it to be in his head.” (The reference to the “Fifth CD thing” is believed to relate to a seat in the United States House of Representatives from Illinois’ Fifth Congressional District.
Emanuel was the Representative from the fifth district before he left to become Obama’s chief of staff. So it’s likely that Emanuel would be the person in the Obama camp to speak to Blagojevich about appointing a replacement to his seat. The complaint also describes a conversation in which Blagojevich discusses appointing a replacement for the fifth district, and potentially refers to whether the quid-pro-quo has been explicitly laid out to President-elect Advisor (possibly Emanuel). Blagojevich says “it’s unsaid”:
