Obama team cleared of seat sell scandal

Source: Agencies  |   2008-12-25  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

UNITED States President-elect Barack Obama has said all along that neither he nor his team were involved in any deal-making with the governor of Illinois over filling his vacated Senate seat. On Tuesday, Obama's hand-picked investigator agreed.

"Everybody behaved appropriately," declared Greg Craig, Obama's incoming White House counsel and the person asked to conduct the internal inquiry into contacts between the transition team and Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.

Prosecutors have said Obama is not implicated in the case against Blagojevich, accused of trying to sell Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder. But the corruption scandal has drained precious energy from Obama's preparations to take over the White House.

In addition to the time Craig devoted to the internal review that Obama requested, the topic also has surfaced at news conferences intended to highlight key appointments. And Obama himself had to sit down last week in Chicago for an interview by federal investigators. Accompanying him was lawyer Robert Bauer, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Federal investigators last week also interviewed two top Obama aides, incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Though Craig completed his review more than a week ago, Obama delayed making it public until those interviews were finished and US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald gave his team the go-ahead.

The inquiry was released in Washington while Obama was vacationing in Hawaii. Though the president-elect has taken questions on the matter on five occasions since Blagojevich's December 9 arrest, the president-elect did not make himself available on Tuesday to talk about it.

Blagojevich is accused of trying to use his authority as governor to appoint Obama's Senate replacement to get cash or a lucrative job for himself, starting days before Obama's November 4 election through December 5. The governor has denied any criminal wrongdoing and has resisted calls for his resignation.

Wiretapped conversations cited in the criminal complaint against Blagojevich were not available to the Obama lawyers who conducted the internal review.

The report states, as Obama has said, that the president-elect had no contact about the seat with the governor or his aides. Further, no one on Obama's transition team discussed any deals or had any knowledge of deals, Craig's report said.